knew what to do.
I stopped, closed my eyes, because you can’t do anything if you’re staring at Confusion. I took a deep breath to calm myself. It didn’t matter how good I was—there wasn’t anyone who could cast magic in high states of emotion. Even Zay, whose fear I could feel in the tattering heartbeat at my wrist, still gave off a calm focus and determination.
Sometimes casting magic meant you had to be of two minds, or two emotions, at once.
I set a Disbursement—I was tired of muscle aches and went instead for a headache. I muttered a few lines of a coffee-commercial jingle to clear my mind. With my eyes still shut, I drew Cancel with my right hand and Sight with my left.
Cancel should wipe out the Confusion. Sight should show me what other magic was being used.
I opened my eyes. Cancel worked wonders. I didn’t even smell the pepper anymore.
Sight showed me magic burning like carved fire on the buildings around me. I actually hadn’t made it all the way through the alley between the buildings, even though it felt like I’d been running for blocks.
Confusion spread a sticky spiderweb between the structures, but now that Cancel was in effect, hovering like a shield over my head, the tendrils of Confusion were no longer touching me.
I took a second to focus on the heartbeats again. Zay and Terric were near. Very near.
I walked past Confusion, and stopped short.
Just on the other side of the spell and buildings, the grounds opened up. It was too dark to see how far back the grounds reached, but somewhere back there were trees and shadows, and flickering lights in the distance.
What I could see, very clearly, was the battle.
Terric glowed like a slice of moonlight, his hair gone silver, his skin pure white except for where dark glyphs shifted and moved across his features. His eyes burned an eerie blue while he chanted, the words falling from his lips in a lyric prayer. He had his feet spread, hands out to either side, holding a Containment spell that covered a twenty-yard circle.
And in that Containment spell were two people: Zayvion and Chase.
I’d never seen them even spar before. Chase hadn’t been around during any of my training sessions. And the only time I’d seen her fight was when the gate opened during my test. She’d been fighting Hungers then, beasts from the other side of death.
Now she was fighting Zayvion.
Even with Sight, watching them hurt my eyes. Still, I didn’t let go of the spell. Zayvion was a seven-foot tower of black flame, silver glyphs whirling over him in liquid ribbons, glowing the same metallic shift of wild colors as the marks magic had left on me.
He wove a spell with his left hand, heaved it at Chase like it was made of lead, and lunged, the machete in his hand pulsing with dark jeweled lights, a different kind of magic, dark magic, coursing through the blade.
But Chase was good. Unlike Zayvion, even through Sight, even throwing magic around—and she was throwing a shitload of the stuff around—Chase looked like Chase. Pretty, a little gaunt, pale-skinned, dark hair pulled back in a braid, black jeans, and a black turtleneck.
Except for one thing. Her eyes glowed red. It wasn’t just the light from magic. It was something else, something more, something dark, like the Hungers, like the Necromorph, burning out from within her. And it was not human.
It scared the hell out of me. Instinct told me to run, to leave this place, to go somewhere where magic didn’t do what they were making it do.
Yeah, well, instinct would just have to suck it.
Chase, knife in one hand, caught the weight of Zay’s spell on the edge of her blade and tore it apart. She re-drew and recast that magic into something else, flicked it low at Zay’s feet.
He dodged. The spell burned after him. He tucked and rolled over the spell, sliced it apart with the machete, and was on his feet again.
In Chase’s other hand was a sword. Not a machete, no. This thing was beautiful, slick, graceful, powerful. Maybe a katana. It burned, not with flame, but with darkness. The air around it seemed darker than the night, and wavered as if heated.
Chase cut a spell into the air with the tip of the blade.
Zayvion closed the distance.
Blades and magic met, clashed. Fire exploded on a viscous wind. Terric, standing inside his Containment spell, turned his face away from