Magic on the Storm

Chapter Twenty

There was no time to see how anyone else was reacting to this. There was no time to think anything through. Hungers would tear the magic users apart in seconds. There was so much wild magic in the air, in the sky, in the city, that it would take the shadowy Hungers only a few minutes to become fully solid. And then they would hunt. They would eat magic users and civilians. They would kill.

I pulled Zayvion’s sword, and wondered why that hadn’t been in my hands all along. A calm washed through me, as if this sword that Zayvion had spent so much time with had been infused with his calm, his strength, his clear, concise ability to deal with a horrifying situation and make competent, lifesaving decisions.

The Hungers, a dozen, two dozen, went from transparent beasts into solid muscled creatures with wide heads, red eyes, and fanged jaws. Magic pulsed down their hides, like black veins, wild magic feeding them, making them strong.

Other things with too many eyes and too many limbs clattered out of the gates behind the Hungers.

Magic users turned weapons and magic on the beasts that howled and charged across the field. But just as quickly as the magic users struck the beasts down, magic, wild magic, poured through the beasts. The black veins along their bodies pulsed with it, and then the beasts stood again, attacked again.

They were not going down and staying down.

A beast leaped for me. I swung the sword, caught the thing midleap, straight through the neck. It fell to the ground, quivered, and lay still.

The blade in my hand went black, then grew bright and silver tip to hilt. Holy shit. Zay’s sword had some kind of spell worked into it so that it could drink the magic out of its foe. Maybe it was honed to drink down dark magic.

It is, Dad said. But you are not trained to use it. You will grow weaker with each strike.

So tell me how to use it right, I thought.

I can’t. He didn’t sound happy about that. I am not the guardian of the gate.

Here’s the thing. I was getting pretty tired of having to pay the price of magic. But I’d do it with grim satisfaction if it meant I could save my friends.

Another Hunger leaped at me. I swung again. Left it headless. It did not rise. The ground beneath my feet swayed and I stumbled as my knees gave out. Okay, he wasn’t kidding. It took a hell of a lot of stamina to wield dark magic.

I pushed back up to my feet, into a fighting stance, sword at the ready.

The four beasts nearest me backed away. Like scenting the wind, they all lifted their wide heads. And ran. Past fallen or injured magic users-easy kills-which made no sense. Ran toward Sedra.

A dozen beasts ran for Sedra. Two dozen. More.

Dane could not hold them off and keep the cage whole. He threw a wall of magic at the beasts, but only half of them fell. The rest rushed him, fast. Too fast. Dane disappeared beneath slathering jaws and wicked claws.

The cage around Sedra constricted, crushing her. Sedra screamed-a strangely inhuman yell.

I started off toward her. But the battlefield was filled with beasts. And with each one I killed, I had to pause, catch my breath, and balance before I could raise the sword and stride forward again.

Jingo Jingo answered Sedra’s cry. Caught in battle with a beast, he cast magic, the disk clenched in his thick palm, and chanted something that sent the beast to its belly. No. Something that made the beast crouch, then spin to launch at Shame’s throat.

Shame opened his arms and laughed, magic caught between his two hands drinking the dark magic out of the creature. But the monster was huge, bigger than a car. It kept coming, no matter how quickly Shame drained it. Shame yelled, anger, terror, maybe even desire, as it broke through his spell and leaped upon him, jaws tearing into his chest.

Terric, on the other side of the battlefield, yelled. “No, no, no!” He swung his axes, cleaving through the beasts between him and Shame, blood and a black ichor covering his face, so much that not even the rain could wash it away as he hacked and sliced. Hungers and the other, stranger creatures with too many hands, too many eyes, and too many teeth fell in pieces at his feet as he cut a bloody swath through them.

I ran toward Shame. Slow. Too damn slow.

Jingo was already striding over to Sedra. Past the slathering pile of beasts on top of Dane, ignoring them, and Dane’s screams, like they were of no more concern to him than a pack of puppies. He slammed the disk, full of magic, into the cage that held Sedra. His voice rose above the battle, above the storm, above the thunder. “This will end!”

Copper lightning shot up out of the ground, enveloping them. Then Jingo Jingo and Sedra were gone, leaving nothing behind but a circle of black ash.

Holy shit. I killed another beast. And another. Then pulled the blood blade to hold another off while I tried to catch my breath and strength. I wasn’t going fast enough. Shame lay dying beneath that creature. Might already be dead.

A blur to my right caught my attention. Victor, wielding his sword, and I swear not even breaking a sweat, sliced his way toward Liddy, who held a protective spell around Chase. I didn’t know why she was protecting Chase, but Chase wasn’t looking too good. She looked dazed.

Liddy wasn’t looking too good either. She didn’t even try to keep Victor from breaking the Shield spell. She stiffened and fell before Victor’s blade reached her.

And then I saw why. Behind her hunkered a huge nightmare of a thing. Too many heads and mouths and hands, all bloodred. It pulled six bloody pincers out of Liddy’s back and reached for Chase. Chase crumpled as if she’d been hit by a Taser. Victor’s sword, which I thought had broken Liddy’s spell, instead finished its intended arc and sliced the creature in half.

The creature shuddered, then fell into a pile of quivering flesh. Flesh that started smoking in the rain. Victor grabbed Chase and dragged her away. He ran back for Liddy, but he was late, too late.

The creature went up in a screaming bonfire of flames, so dark, it hurt to look at it. And somewhere in that flame had been Liddy.

This was a slaughter.

Chase coughed and rocked, as if she’d hit the ground from a height and was trying to kick-start her lungs. Blood and rain splashed across her face. That nightmare creature had done some damage.

From the edge of the clearing, I saw another beast moving fast, liquid on four legs.

Greyson. No longer a man. All pissed-off hell-spawn creature, somehow more familiar and less frightening than the Hungers and horrors, coming straight for Chase. He tore through the Hungers, sucking down their life, their magic, and then spewed that magic at the other creatures, boiling them until they burst into flame.

I didn’t know where Hayden was. Didn’t know how Greyson had gotten away from him. But there was another killer on Greyson’s heels. Just as fast. Just as frightening. Coming down heavy enough I could feel the vibration of his stride under my feet.

Stone.

And he looked angry.

Greyson pounded toward Chase, throwing Hungers to the ground, laying a path of destruction behind him.

Allison, my dad said. Get close to Greyson.

I intended to do just that. Then I intended to stick Zay’s sword in his chest.

I understood the pain Chase must be going through. She still loved Greyson, even though he wasn’t human anymore. I could forgive her for siding with him, for wanting to defend him. But I would not let that keep me from killing the bastard.

If you kill Greyson, Dad said, you will kill the part of me inside him.

You’re not supposed to be alive anyway, I said. Get rid of him, get rid of you. How is that a bad thing?

Because without me, you’ll never be able to bring Zayvion back.

A chill washed over my skin, colder than the rain. Stone leaped and landed, hard, in the middle of Greyson’s back. I heard bones break. Chase screamed as if the pain was hers to share, and maybe it was. She pushed up to her knees, and feet, and stumbled toward Greyson.

Victor did not stop her, too busy with the half dozen Hungers that surrounded him.

Hayden was back, at the northernmost edge of the field, swinging his broadsword like a one-man army, and yelling at the top of his lungs.

Zayvion is trapped, my father said. They did more than push him through the gate. They locked him there. They are using him there. He will never return.

No, I thought. That’s a lie.

My hand jerked, and I nicked the side of my thumb on the glass and steel blood blade I carried. Zayvion’s blood blade. I hadn’t moved my hand-my father had.

What the hell? It was a small cut, but blood ran freely from it.

Blood to blood, Allison.

I didn’t know what he was talking about, or why it mattered. He drew on the magic in the air, maybe used some of the magic in me, and I felt the tight, intimate tingling of a Truth spell spread through me, spread between us.

Zayvion is locked on the other side of death, my father said, and I felt the truth of it like a fire against my bones.

I thought Truth spells were bad on the outside. Having someone inside of my head bonding through Truth hurt. But it was very, very clear that my father was not lying.

I believe I can free him and send his soul back to his body, back into life. If you regain the parts of me Greyson now holds. And if I cross over into death to find him now. His time there is at an end. He is dying.

I didn’t want to hear that, didn’t want to feel that truth burning through me.

We can do it later. After the battle. After we win. You can help me later. I didn’t care how desperate I sounded. He already knew what I was feeling. Truth spells worked both ways.

No, I cannot.

He broke the Truth spell, or uncast it, or did whatever it is a dead guy who can still freaking cast magic from inside someone else’s freaking body can do.

I opened my mouth to curse, but didn’t have time. More and more creatures continued to pour out of the gate. Too many for the magic users to deal with, too many to hope to defeat, too many to let loose into the city.

Victor had carved his way across the field to the front of the gate, his hands lifted in a complicated glyph that would close it. Nikolai, the good-looking Russian Closer, stood next to him, killing the beasts that came too near, holding a Shield of magic so that Victor could do his work.

Close the gate. So that there were no more beasts loose in the world.

Close the gate. And trap Zayvion.

Close the gate. Sealing Zayvion’s death.

Maeve was still on the ground, unconscious, but Sunny knelt next to her, keeping the beasts away with wicked knives.

Shame was also on the ground.

Terric had destroyed everything between him and Shame, and beheaded and de-limbed the Hunger that had attacked Shame. Terric now crouched next to Shame, one hand on his chest, glowing with magic that sank into Shame and poured out of him into the ground, as if Shame were a sieve, broken, unable to carry magic, life, breath.

I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. Terric was crying, his teeth bared in fury, his ax raised and crackling with black licks of magic as creatures circled them, came too close, and died on the edge of his blade. The blood on one side of his face was finger-painted in the glyph for life and I knew it had been traced there by Shame.

Shame was dying. Maybe he was already dead. I didn’t have the wrist cuff. I couldn’t tell if his heart still beat.

The gate was about to close. There was no more time to make good decisions. There was only time to make a decision.

Whom to save?

Zayvion had once told me I was not a killer. I’d proved him wrong. I had killed. But right now, it was life I was trying to hold on to.

I ran toward Greyson, caught the attention of too many creatures, and hacked my way through them. Months of training and sheer fury drove me on, Zayvion’s sword drinking down the magic, the energy, of the beasts. It was draining me, but I was pulling on magic from the sky, wild magic that licked and bloomed and caught fire in my blood, my bones, and fed me strength.

I channeled the storm. And now the storm raged in me.

Too bad for the beasts. Too bad for anyone in my way.

Closer, my father said.

I made ground as things born of death’s nightmares leaped at me, tearing at my magic, tearing at my flesh. Something, a claw or a fang, got through, sliced my thigh. Something else raked down my back. I felt the hot pump of blood mix with the hard-falling rain.

Then I was on Greyson.

Still pinned beneath Stone, he was more man than he had been. And I knew why. Chase lay next to him, frozen, her hand clasped with his. She was alive. I thought she was. And she was pouring her life out to sustain his.

Sometimes love made you stronger. And sometimes it made you crazy.

Greyson looked up at me. “There is still hope.”

“Not for you. Give me back my father, you bastard.” I swung the sword.

My father shifted in my head, stretched like electricity crackling behind my eyes. He pushed at my brain, my mind, my head.

My sword halted midswing.

My father’s ghost stood next to me, his hand blocking my blade. “Taking his life with this blade will kill you,” he said, from outside my mind.

I didn’t care. I had a lot of fury and magic holding me up. But there was also a lot of screaming in the back of my head that had been going on for a while. I knew I was ignoring a lot of pain. Maybe ignoring too much pain.

“Get out of my way,” I said through clenched teeth.

“Allison.” My father stepped closer to me. I caught the scent of him, wintergreen and leather. His voice was gentle. “There is no time for revenge. Not if you want life to win.”

How much time did it take to kill someone?

And that was when I felt it. The storm was passing, the rain lifting. Wild storms ended as quickly as they hit. Soon there would be no more wild magic to hold me up. I glanced up, away at the city, crouched in magicless darkness.

Lights flickered on, blazed. Magic caught again like a flame to a wick, and exhaled life and safety into the city. We had done it. We had channeled the wild magic away from the city. The storm was passing.

More than that, the wells and networks were filling fast. I could feel the deep tingle of familiar magic wrapping up inside me again, a heavy warm weight that stretched out against my skin, all pleasure, no pain.

I could easily access that magic, even out here in magicless St. Johns. But it was obvious Chase, lying still, eyes closed, hand clasped with Greyson’s at my feet, struggled to reach magic. To keep him alive.

My father let go of the sword, and bent over Greyson.

Stone growled. My father paid no attention to him. Instead, Dad traced a glyph in the air, a serpentine line that glowed pure white gold. He caught it up on his hands, where it pressed into place like gauntlets a king might wear. My father glowed with that light, as if the magic wrapped him in its vestments.

And then he pressed his hand into Greyson’s head.

Yes. Into.

Greyson went absolutely still, and Dad said something that sounded like an old language. A blessing more than a curse.

The gold lines of magic grew stronger and filled my dad with more light. He stood, and was more solid than he had been, though I could still see Stone and Greyson through him.

He regarded me for a moment. “Good-bye, daughter.” He turned toward the gate.

A rumble shook the ground. I turned. The gate, trapped by Victor’s spells, began to collapse.

Hayden was cutting a swath through the beasts toward us. He’d be here, on top of Greyson and Chase, in a second.

And out of the corner of my eye, I saw Terric stand and swing his ax, killing another beast, while he poured magic, less than before, into Shame. Terric was exhausted. The easy magic, the wild magic, was nearly gone.

Without it, Shame would die.

I spun, Zay’s sword still in my hand, and ran for the center of the field, for the pile of broken, blown-apart disks that no longer held magic, where the gate still shimmered in the air, growing smaller as Victor wrapped it in massive lines of magic that webbed it so that no more creatures poured out.

I didn’t want the disks. I wanted the crystal. Found it, glowing pink with magic beneath the burnt silver disks. I picked it up and could almost taste the sweetness of the full, heavy magic it carried like a perfume on the back of my throat.

“Terric!” I yelled.

He glanced over. I threw the crystal to him, willing it with mind and magic to find him, reach him. He caught it with the hand that was channeling magic, life, into Shame.

His eyes widened. And then he was on his knees, his ax discarded at his side, pressing the crystal to Shame’s chest with both hands, as if it were a new heart for a broken toy. He bent and pressed his forehead to Shame’s, whispering to him.

No time.

My father strode toward the gate. Close enough he could step through, but Victor’s lines blocked him.

“He must let me pass,” my father said.

Victor was focused, caught in a trance of sheer will, sweat peppering his face, his arms shaking as he chanted the spell and forced the gate between life and death to close. He was wielding a hell of a lot of magic with very little resources.

He did not see my dad. He did not know he was sealing Zayvion’s death forever.

There was no cavalry to come to our rescue.

But I didn’t need a cavalry to save Zayvion.

I strode over to Victor. My teacher, Zayvion’s teacher, who might even have been a father figure to Zay. I put my hand on his shoulder and used Influence so that he would understand me and obey.

“Wait until I pass through. Then close the gate behind me.”

“Allie,” he gasped. “It is suicide.”

“Zayvion is the guardian of the gates and I am his Soul Complement. No one’s going to tell me I can’t bring him home.”

Someone yelled. I thought it was Shame. He had told me I couldn’t go anywhere without him.

He was wrong.

I glanced over my shoulder. Shame was barely standing, eyes wide in horror or anger, one hand extended toward me. Terric stood behind him, one hand clasped with his, the other arm wrapped around Shame’s waist, holding him up, holding him back.

“Allie,” Shame yelled. “Don’t!”

I didn’t listen. I held up one hand. A wave. A farewell, and I turned away. Shame was in good hands. Maybe the best hands he could be in. Terric’s hands.

If there was ever going to be a chance to bring Zayvion back, it was now.

The shadow of a figure in flight flashed above me. Stone.

The big rock landed with surprising grace at my side.

I sheathed Zay’s sword across my back, and glanced down at Stone, all muscle and wing and fangs. He tipped his head to look up at me, ears perked into triangles.

“Stay,” I said. “I have work to do.”

Stone growled, then crooned like an out-of-tune pipe organ. His wings pressed against his back and he took a step toward the gate.

Fine. I was running out of time. I didn’t know if Stone could walk into death and return alive. Hells, I didn’t know if I could walk into death and come out alive. Didn’t know if I could find Zay’s soul and drag it back with me into the living world.

But I sure as hell was going to find out.

“Are you ready?” I asked my dad.

He frowned. “Where are you going?”

“To save my man.” I put my hand down on Stone’s head. My father smiled. I didn’t know why. Maybe he was angry.

“No,” he said, reading my thoughts. “Impressed. You know you can’t survive in there without me.”

“I didn’t say I was going alone.” I didn’t trust him. Sure, he talked a nice Truth spell, but once on the other side, he might change his mind about saving Zayvion. I wouldn’t chance that.

Dad took his place at my right, and Stone stood at my left. Without another look back, I walked through the gates of death.

Read on for an exciting excerpt from

Devon Monk’s next Allie Beckstrom novel,

MAGIC AT THE GATE

Coming in November 2010 from Roc

Death had seen better days. Vacant, crumbling buildings, a brown-red sky, and slick pools of black oil stretching out along the sidewalk of what I was pretty sure was supposed to be Burnside Boulevard. The city-and it was very clear we were in Portland-looked like a dump. If this was death, I wanted to meet the marketing team that had dreamed up both the fluffy-cloud-golden-harp thing and the eternal-fires-of-burning-hell shtick.

Because this place was broken and empty. Achingly so.

“Allison?” my father, next to me, said.

He was fully solid now, no longer ghostlike at all. A little taller than I, gray hair, wearing a business suit with a lavender handkerchief in the pocket. Death didn’t seem to bother him one bit.

And it shouldn’t have. He belonged here.

He squeezed my arm, his eyes flicking back and forth, searching the details of my face. “Can you breathe?”

Of all the dumb questions. “Of course I can breathe. Let go of me.”

His lips pressed together in a thin line and the familiar anger clouded his eyes. He pulled his hand away from my arm.

There was no air. No air in my lungs, and none to breathe. I tried not to panic, but, hey, this was death. I knew I’d be lucky to get out of here alive. And I had to get out of here alive. Zayvion was here, somewhere, his soul sent here, his body in life, in a coma.

This was my one chance, my only chance, to save him.

The wild-magic storm might have passed, but the very real danger of my never seeing Zayvion’s beautiful eyes, hearing his gentle voice, feeling his touch, set off a sharp panic in my chest.

Well, that and not being able to breathe.

Dad put his left hand in his pocket, tucking away something. Then he crossed his arms over his chest and watched me gasp. Stone-cold, that man.

I shut my mouth and glared. Yes, I was that stubborn. My vision darkened at the edges.

Could you pass out in death? I was about to find out.

Stone growled and stepped toward Dad, fangs bared. That’s my boy. Stone’s normally dark gray body was now black, shot through with lightning flecks of blue and green and pink, as if he were made of obsidian with opal running beneath the glassy surface. He shone, his eyes glowing a deep amber.

“Touch the Animate,” Dad said. “You should be able to breathe again.”

Since it was beginning to dawn on me that passing out and leaving my dad conscious might be a really stupid idea, I put my hand on Stone’s head.

Air-good. . well, if not good, serviceable, smelly air-filled my lungs. I hacked like a smoker on a three-day bender. My lungs hurt.

“You are in death.” Dad hit lecture mode from word one. “A living being crossed into death. There is so little chance you could have survived that, Allison. No one can step into death if they are fully alive. And yet here you stand. It does make me curious. What part of you is dead, my daughter?”

I didn’t know. My sense of humor, maybe? My tolerance for his being a jerk? Or maybe because my Soul Complement was in a coma and his soul was already in death-that counted. I was too busy coughing and trying to breathe to be philosophical.

He shook his head, dismissing the question as easily as he dismissed me. “To survive you will need to stay in contact with something that is neither fully alive nor completely dead. Something that exists in a between state. A filter between life and death.”

“You’re dead.” I finally managed to exhale. “All dead. Why could I breathe when you touched me?”

“That answer is complicated.” He looked up and down the street, then at the building next to us, as if getting his bearings, and started walking down the street.

I followed him, and Stone somehow sensed the need to stay under my hand. There was no one on the streets with us, no wind, no rain. When I glanced up, it was nothing but terra-cotta sky and hard white light.

“Tell me you’re dead,” I said.

“Very much so. That doesn’t mean I’m not without resources.”

Which meant part of him, some of him somewhere, was alive. Great. I did not trust my dad. I never had. For good reason. And that very calm, trustworthy face he was wearing made me twitchy.

“Where are you alive? Why?” I asked. “Who’s helping you?”

“That is not important.”

“Yes, it is. What is your angle in all this, Dad? I have lost track of whose side you’re on.”

“I am on magic’s side. To see that it falls into the right hands. My motives are not yours to question.”

“I’ll question your motives until the day I die. Again. For reals.”

“This is real,” he said quietly. “Very real. If you are to survive, you need to put your stubbornness aside and listen to me.”

“Oh, I just love that idea.”

“Love it or not, your options are limited. Living flesh does not travel well in the world of death. I believe if you stay in contact with the Animate, it will filter the. . irritants of death long enough for you to accomplish your task.”

He made it sound as if he were teaching me the ABC’s and knew there was no way I’d ever make it to Q.

He stopped and glanced back down the street the way we’d come. “Faster would be better.”

He grabbed my arm and propelled me down an alley. I shook free of him, my other hand still on Stone’s head, and looked over my shoulder.

Watercolor people. And not the nice kind. Unlike the other Veiled I had seen in life, these ghostly people barely resembled people. With their twisted bodies and sagging faces, they resembled movie zombies more than ghosts. They also looked solid.

And hungry.

Stone growled.

The Veiled heard him, turned our way, sniffing, scenting, crooked hands tracing half-formed glyphs, as if they could use magic to find us.

“Veiled?” I asked.

“Quiet,” Dad said.

Stone’s ears flattened. He stopped making noise but his lips were pulled back to expose a row of sharp teeth and fangs.

Dad traced a glyph in the air and magic followed in a solid gold line at his fingertips. I wasn’t using Sight, yet magic was clearly visible. That wasn’t how it worked in life. Magic was too fast to be visible. Here, it was slow and fluid.

He finished the glyph. Camouflage glittered in the air like a filigreed screen. He whispered a word and the glyph stretched and widened, creating a swirling shell around us. I swallowed, but could not taste anything. That was different from in life too. Magic didn’t smell or taste here.

Or maybe I just wasn’t dead enough to sense it.

The Veiled were almost on us.

“This way,” Dad whispered. He rolled his fingers, catching up the lines of the Camouflage glyph and balancing it on his open palm. He pushed his palm outward in a sort of traffic-cop stop motion and the spell moved with us, keeping us hidden.

Impressive.

Dad’s mouth set in a hard line and his eyes narrowed, as if casting magic and maintaining the spell wasn’t easy. Still, he stormed down the alleyway-not once looking back-strong, confident.

And for a second, just a second, I saw my dad as a heroic figure. The epitome of what a magic user should be. The mythic wizard who knew the hidden strengths of magic and his own soul. Even in death, my dad stood tall and kicked ass.

“Walk or be eaten,” he said.

Okay, so much for the hero bit.

I picked up the pace and Stone padded along beside me.

The Veiled stepped into the alley behind us and shuffled over to where we’d been standing. They didn’t follow us. A few dropped to their knees, patting the sidewalk as if they’d just lost something, while others ran their hands along the brick wall, mouths open. They leaned against the building and sucked at the wall as if they were starving for even the slightest drop of magic it might contain.

It creeped me out. I walked faster, holding tight to Stone’s ear.

“I did not want to enter this way,” Dad said, “but bringing you along has changed my approach. Why must you challenge me in every way, Allison?”

“I’d be happy to help,” I said as pleasantly as I could muster, “if you’d tell me where Zayvion is so I can get the hell out of here.”

He stopped at the other end of the alley. More Veiled blocked our passage. These stared at us as if they could see right through the Camouflage my dad still held.

That wasn’t good.

I put my hand on the hilt of Zayvion’s katana, which was sheathed on my back.

“Don’t draw the blade.”

There wasn’t a lot of room in the alley. I was mostly behind him. I didn’t know how he’d seen me reach for the sword.

“I’m not going to wait until they jump us.”

And just like that, the Veiled rushed toward us.

“Do you trust me?” he asked without looking back at me.

“No.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

My dad broke the Camouflage spell-and I mean it shattered and fell like glass exploding.

Then he spun and stuck his hands into my chest.

Into. My. Chest.

It hurt. I inhaled. Exhaled. Yelled. Couldn’t move to draw the sword, draw a spell, draw a breath.

Stone launched at him. Then I couldn’t breathe even more.

Dad was fast. He pulled his hands free, pulling magic-pink and silver and black-out of my chest and pointing at Stone, who halted in his tracks and stepped on my foot, so I had at least some contact. Dad cast a glyph out of the magic-my magic-and threw a metallic, sparking fireball at the Veiled.

The explosion lit the street and carved hard shadows down the alley.

The Veiled screamed, an unholy sound that echoed out and out and seemed to reflect off of the sky as if it were a low ceiling. It was too big a sound, too much sound, in too small a place.

Their scream vibrated somewhere deep inside of me where I couldn’t get away from it, making their pain a part of me, my magic a part of them.

No, no, no.

I reached for Stone, for my dad, for anyone, anything to hold on to to make this stop. Then Dad was standing in front of me, his hand over the old bullet scar just below my collarbone.

“Breathe, Allison. Breathe.”

I gasped. Got some air down. Tasted something sweet against my tongue, and the cool, rough bricks of the building against my back.

“What. The. Hell,” I said.

“Light and Dark magic, through Death magic,” he said evenly, not moving away from me. “A transference. I took from the magic within you, and now I give you back the magic of death.”

So that was the bluish glow coming from his hand.

“Wait. What? You are not putting dead people in me.” I pushed at his hands, but it didn’t do much good. I was very, very tired, and he didn’t seem to have any problem keeping me pinned against the wall.

Why was I was so tired?

Could it be because I was in death? And my father had just ripped magic out of my chest? And right before that, back in life, I’d Grounded a wild-magic storm and fought a bunch of crazy magic users, all the while killing Hungers and other nightmarish creatures while trying to save my friends’ lives?

Yes. That would be why. I’d had a hell of a day and the adrenaline of the battlefield was wearing off, leaving behind the very real horror of what had happened.

Zayvion was in a coma. Shame had almost died. For all I knew, the crystal I’d given to Terric had been only a temporary reprieve for Shame. Jingo Jingo betrayed everyone, nearly killed Maeve, nearly killed Shame, kidnapped Sedra. Magic users had turned against magic users. Liddy, my Death magic teacher, was dead. Chase and Greyson might be dead too. And La, and Joshua, and probably more were hurt. Violet was in the hospital. Kevin too.

The Authority wasn’t cracking; it had broken. Sides had been taken. The war was on.

Whoever came out on top would rule how magic was used by the common citizen, and by the Authority. Whoever came out on top would control all the magic the public knew about, and, worse, all the magic they didn’t know about. There was a lot of power at stake here. Plenty enough to kill for.

And I was here, dead. With no one but my gargoyle and my dad to help me find my way home. Where were my ruby slippers when I needed them?