Chapter Six: Other Hands Do Burdens Hold

 

We emerged in the turret and I stumbled over to the desk. My supplies slid from my bag across the wood. My wrapped painting and the Kinsky sketches stopped near the edge, teetering.

Another death. Images of death and dying whirled in my mind. I was drowning in death’s darkness.

I touched the table.

Constantine's cloak zipped from him in an effortless movement. He crouched down, darkly contemplating Guard Rock, who was gesturing something to him. “Your rock says they were ambushed at the 'gate with five arms.'” He frowned at Guard Rock. “The Library of Alexandria? Why the devil were you—”

Magic hooked into my gut, stiffening my muscles as the layer whispered in four dimensions. An Awakening.

I swayed unsteadily, and Constantine was suddenly lurching over to catch me, his palms pressed to my cheeks as he searched my pupils. “Ren?”

Magic soared through me as his expletives grew distant in my ears. I raised my hands and shot the paint splatters on my fingers against the walls to strengthen the wards on the complex.

The wards pulsed. Magic tingled from every pore. The painting session had been...different. I felt more in control, more powerful. I let calm descend and slowly rotated my shoulders forward, feeling the energy course through me as I let the magic pull me upright. This Awakening would be easy.

I rotated my palm downward.

“No.” Constantine's voice was dark. He grabbed my hand and pulled me against him. He flicked his finger and my fitted trench cloak peeled from my frame and flew to the other side of the room.

“Constantine—”

“No. It’s insanity. With you hopped up on juice and Stavros knowing it? No way are you going. I don’t care what—” His eyes unfocused, then a flood of relief filled him painfully and suddenly. “Those idiots got your device into production.”

I pulled my hand and body free and the cloak sailed back over to me. I swung it in an arc, shrugging my arms into it.

Magic coursed through me. Power.

“Alexander’s on the move. I told him you'd be alerting him momentarily with a location.”

“There’s no need.” I could just pop in, grab the emerging mage, and pop back out. I just had to hurry.

I stepped forward, palm out.

“If you think I’m letting you go, you have underestimated things,” Constantine said, magic twining around his fingers; his expression savage.

One of the threads connected to my chest gave a painful squeeze. I fought it for a moment, watching Constantine’s face grow darker. An even more painful twist squeezed. Disappointment.

I licked my lips. “I could go anyway.”

“You could.” Magic coursed through the connections streaming in and out of him and to me—a bright ultramarine and deep brown surging through the others.

I sagged, my hand falling like a shoulder muscle had been cut. “Tattletale.”

“I've lost the ability to be evil in the truly great ways. You've reduced me to this existence.”

“Fine. Fine. Even though—”

“As soon as—”

“I've got it. You are worse than Olivia.” I growled and turned.

His hand slipped down my forearm. “I don't think so.” When I looked at him, he was encased in his fitted cloak again as well.

“You aren't coming.” This wasn’t like painting while knowing he was protected.

“We will simply appear, then leave again just as quickly.” His expression was calm, his fury abruptly, carefully tucked away. He rolled magic around two fingers in an unending loop. “Unless you have other plans?”

What if Axer’s team couldn't handle the Department? What if the praetorians came anyway? What if—

“If you don’t take me with you, I will simply port to Times Square and stand on the sidewalk,” Constantine said. “Waiting to see who comes for me first.”

He would, too. He was just that kind of asshole. I swore and grabbed his arm. “That's blackmail.”

“Far better than tattling. I appreciate your assistance.”

I growled at him again, swiped a hand through the air to make a paint-spattered page fall to the ground, and folded us through the fibers. There was nothing quite like painting to make the layers open before me. It was the constant portent of doom I could live without.

I concentrated on the feeling of the Awakening, rifling through the data to ascertain the exact location, and requested the paper spit us out twenty feet from it. Real-time data bloomed, and I could feel Constantine's immediate push.

I gnashed my teeth and forced my mind to send Axer every detail of the location and all the minute pieces of data my senses were spewing.

Even the odd data points, like how strange the ground felt—like it was full of my magic. Miles of it. A girl on the sidewalk stared at her glowing green hands in wonder and fear. Three black cats with glowing eyes slunk under a car, tails curling around the back bumper. Eleven black clad figures stealthily moved through the shadows, around the sides of the buildings in the distance. Magic spiked from the devices on their cloaks.

I moved automatically, raising my arms to blast the forms.

“No,” Constantine hissed and stepped in front of me, gripping my wrists with just enough container magic to halt my movement. The ground vibrated beneath us, reacting to the start of my channeling.

I clenched my teeth as I watched the sinister figures moving closer and the girl glowing brighter. Constantine could use my magic, but he’d never be able to match me in the First Layer, if I chose to push.

“I don't need to,” he said, squeezing my wrists and reading my thoughts. “You have given me other far more potent weapons—emotional weapons. You said you would leave,” he bit out. “You promised Price.”

You promised me.

But could I live with the girl being taken?

Before I could make a conscious decision, a dark figure swooped in overwhelming one of the hunters then another, breaking one neck then the next. The motions were as soundless as they were lethal.

I sagged against Constantine.

The cloaked figure had taken out six of the eleven figures before the others finally noticed. “Shivit, shivit, shivit! Watch ou—”

A gurgle replaced the end of the word. Then two additional cloaked figures —Ramirez and Greene, identifiable in the connected, shared spells woven in the fibers of all our cloaks—appeared and took out the remaining four. Their faces were hidden to everyone except those of us who wore garments linked through the identity spell.

“Where are they?” Axer demanded in the low, harsh voice that always accompanied him in battle mode, as he pivoted and quickly scanned under the car and around the area.

Dark brown hair shaded deep blue eyes as he visually swept the area and narrowed in first on the girl and hunters, then moved toward us. My magic stuttered a beat as his intense too-blue gaze landed on me.

Axer assessed our body posture, Constantine's grip on my wrists, the way he was positioned in front of me, then he turned and pulled with both hands, tearing rising black clad figures from their feet and new ones from their perches.

The Awakening mage looked up, the sound of falling bodies breaking through her wonder, and I could see the moment fear overtook everything else. Greene moved with careful steps toward the shell-shocked girl, speaking reassuring words to the shaking Awakening mage as he slipped a control cuff around her wrist. I knew intimately and intellectually that the cuff would protect her, but not naturally, not emotionally, not anymore. Why couldn't they let her work it all out in a containment unit like the Third Layer?

My torso pushed toward her, but Constantine forced me back, unsettling my feet and making me stumble.

“Where are the cats?” Axer demanded again.

“Cats?” Constantine's emotions plunged to dread as he said it.

Thick, black wisps drifted from the shadows, as if forced from hiding, and flew straight at us. The cats. Praetorian scouts. Constantine and Axer whirled to face them, feeling from me where the threat was emanating. I raised my hand automatically and power ripped from my fingers—

—then stuttered an inch away from the tips, hovering there painfully—

Two shadows converged on Axer.

One headed straight for Constantine.

I threw more power into the magic and blinding pain crippled me from my toes clear up to my fingertips as the magic was sucked violently back inside me.

Constantine’s jab glanced off the diving shadow. The shadow laughed and veered into a tight circle for another pass. I could hear Greene yell something in the background as he pushed the girl behind a car.

Shockwaves of pain vibrated through my body as the magic I'd been channeling shot down to my toes and the earth reached up to secure it—turning it into tempered steel around my feet.

All magic ceased within me. Like a flame that had been abruptly doused.

Breathless and panicked, I made frantic eye contact with Constantine, who whirled to meet another pass of the praetorian.

Greene was throwing devices, Ramirez was fading in and out of the shadows himself, and as a dozen new figures appeared, Axer began lighting the street with colored flame. I could do nothing to help. I grabbed a rock from the ground and hammered uselessly at the steel mound securing me. But it was an inviolate substance created by my own magic.

I tried to pull the location data back to mind, searching for my mistake. The ground had felt strange. I had sent all the information to Axer through the device I had given Dagfinn, and anything registering as my magic would be registered only with my signature.

An intricate trap. Stavros had plenty of my magic. I gave it around freely on campus, and he had been collecting it. The Department oversaw the First Layer grid and safety. He had waited until I was hopped up, like Constantine had said, and laid a trap—one he had obviously had up his sleeve—spreading my magic over the wide expanse of an area that would meet whatever Awakening area parameters he set.

Because of course he knew I would channel magic when answering an Awakening.

I pounded harder at the restraints.

The one thing Stavros hadn't counted on was me securing outside help. I was never going to hear the end of it from the others.

Please, please let me never hear the end of it. That would mean everyone would survive.

I frantically searched for a way to free myself.

Constantine's back was to me as he fended off the shadow again—but he had limited options in the First Layer when not pulling magic from me. As he fumbled for something in his cloak, his right arm snapped under a barrage of spells.

The praetorian thrust a knife into his side and Constantine arched. Electricity lit against the praetorian’s neck. A glowing piece of Stavros sparked on the praetorian’s deadly shadowed claws.

One swipe with those talons and Stavros would be inside of Constantine.

My arm drew back and with a thousand tossed balls in my muscle memory, I chucked the rock straight into the praetorian’s eye.

The praetorian stumbled backward, taking the embedded knife with him. Blood gushed from Constantine’s side, but using his broken arm he awkwardly pulled out the box of magic I had given him at the hut. In a less than smooth kneeling motion, he smashed it against the steel encasing my feet. Splinters of metal lifted on winded wings as the crow-shaped shadow of the praetorian zoomed upward, banked then rocketed toward us.

While looking directly at me and seeing through my eyes, he lifted his palm to meet the attack, leeching magic from me through the fingers hanging from his broken arm that were touching my ankles, and up his body into his raised palm. My magic formed a sphere around the shadow as it hit, forming a dark, malevolent ball that Constantine tightly gripped.

It swirled darkly in his grasp. His other hand shook unevenly on its broken axis as it clasped my foot. My magic surged through him to keep hold of the praetorian.

“Don't move. God, your magic is everywhere,” he said, voice strained. “It will grab you again as soon as you step free, and I can't do this a second time. Just...just wait.” His eyes tightened in pain.

But the arrival of praetorian scouts meant more were minutes, seconds, away. Praetorian warriors who weren't mere scouts.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered. His fingers became as immovable as the steel had been, held there by my own magic.

“No,” he said, raised fingers tightening around the ball of shadow. “They will be.”

Axer, Ramirez, and Greene crushed the hunters with speed and stealth, leaving only two remaining hunters and two praetorian scouts. Fortunately, neither praetorian was Kaine.

“Do it,” Constantine yelled to them, his hoarse voice grim.

I looked at him in question.

He shook his head. “Hold on,” he whispered to me.

Axer’s movements shifted, and rather than repelling the aggressors, he drew the hunters and praetorians closer to us.

As the deadly steps of the combat mages danced closer, I could feel only guilt. They were risking their necks to save the ferals and to save me. And while Camille Straught had thought I deserved a boon for saving campus, I'd probably used it up by now. And she’d never been a fan of feral mages, or any she deemed as less in control.

But following Axer to his grave? Of that, there was no doubt for any of them.

My magicless fingers trembled.

It had been weeks since I'd left campus, since my possessed fingers had tried to kill Axer. But I could still feel the echoes in my hands, where I had gripped the lines of his life and choked the air from his throat. I could hear Stavros cackling about the Dares' only weakness. I could feel Stavros' exultation at finally, finally, getting the Dare scion under his control.

He had wanted Axer's powers for longer than I'd had magic, but Axer had been untouchable. Until me. I was his albatross.

Axer slaughtered the last two hunters, then Ramirez and Greene used their remaining magic to thrust the shadows toward him. Axer grabbed them as if they were rag dolls and flung them into the ball in Constantine’s hand.

With the magic in one of his last containers, Axer slid forward and encased the ball in a layer of magic that reverberated through all three of us.

Breathing heavily, he tied the magic and released it.

But he didn’t relax. In fact, he appeared unusually vigilant, a strange look appearing in his eyes as Ramirez closed in.

And I could see it—what they sensed as the ground beneath all of us started shaking.

Ramirez immediately became a shadow at Axer’s back, watching the street with easy, dark sweeps of his eyes as Greene helped the Awakening mage to her feet. Axer's shoulders tensed. He stared at my neck, my chest, then the hand still gripping my ankle, keeping me anchored. I could feel a single emotion radiating from him that couldn't be hidden—a deep longing to step forward and complete the circle. My heart ached as we made eye contact.

He looked to the distance, then to the ground at my feet, expression pinched as if a set of unpleasant options had presented themselves, and he needed to choose one.

“We need to leave,” Constantine said, his grip on me not easing, the three praetorian shadows in his grip steadily growing darker. His gaze met his roommate’s. “But not from here.”

Something passed between them—a stream of conversation that I wasn't privy to.

Axer reached forward and gripped Constantine’s side, knitting it back together then resetting Constantine’s broken arm with half a container of magic.

Shadows shrieked in the wind indicating Kaine was on the move. Only this time, the sound seemed to emanate from Constantine's palm.

The magic around me suddenly went dormant. Constantine hissed as my magic flooded him, forcing him to loosen his grip on me.

My freed magic started sucking back down to my feet, reforming chains.

Axer flung his last half-container of magic straight at us.

The world blurred around me, and Constantine's grip shook completely free.

The mist disappeared like fog on suddenly opened windows, and my magic exploded unrestrained. I looked around to see what my freed senses already told me. Constantine and I were forty-two kilometers to the west of where the Awakening was happening, on the edge of a different town. In the distance, I could see people walking down a main street, oblivious to what was happening less than fifty kilometers away.

There was a loud boom beside me as Constantine and the shadowed ball he'd been holding crashed to the ground. Constantine's wrist cracked against the pavement, his open palm scorched.

Magic coiled within me. How dare they.

The praetorian scouts rose, and the entirety of my rage ascended with them. This was my layer. A layer where my magic was king.

Save the town, save the non-magicals, trust in your friends.

I hooked a lash of magic, like a tail behind me, curling around Constantine and grabbing the praetorians and enfolding the five of us into the Second Layer's Death Valley.

Come and get us, I sent to Kaine in a call of magic.

Constantine spun out to a crouch as we slid across the hot sand in the blinding desert landscape.

The praetorian scouts rose, covered in moving shadow, one wearing Stavros's face.

“I'm disappointed in you, Miss Crown,” he bit out. “Enlisting others to do your dirty work.”

“Too like you?” I whipped sand into my palm and felt Constantine move into position behind me, disregarding his own broken bones.

Stavros's ruthless gaze focused on Constantine, and his smiles turned deliberate. “Interesting. I had thought them your loved ones, but I see that you are fully okay with them dying in service to you.”

Rage blew away everything else. I flung away the fingers of magic grasping at my sleeve. I ejected the two useless shadows and flew at the shadow wearing Stavros's face with all the magic within me, clenching it between my sun-struck palms.

I shot the incandescently charged magic straight into it. It shrieked in the full light of the sun, pieces of shadow and Stavros’ face falling from it like cracked clay and leaving behind a ragged man. A normal mage, broken and twitching on the hot sand.

My chest rose and fell in rattling heaves, and I stared at the shell of the man who was now absent of a shadow, absent of my enemy's face.

An ordinary man twitching on the sand.

“Ren,” Constantine said tightly. “We have to go.”

I let out a broken laugh, then shoved my hand out before Constantine could convert on the alarmed actions his emotions said he was about to take. “Wait.”

I forced myself to bring forward a careful mental pyramid. To construct something deliberate instead of blindly letting my magic take control. I concentrated, then shoved the convulsing man through the layer and to a point in the distance that Will's super encyclopedia-and-occasional-map labeled a hospital.

Then I shakily withdrew the port paper and enfolded the two of us into the Third Layer.