Crimes Against Magic (33 page)

His shock that one of my hands was free lasted about two seconds, before a sledgehammer of air wrapped around my fist slammed into his temple. He rocked back and I kicked him off me, using the brief moment to cut the other rope and roll off the table. 

"I've always been better than you," I said and forced every ounce of strength into a blast of air that would have flipped a truck. It hit Mordred in the chest and drove him back, and through the window, accompanied by an explosion of noise as the thick glass shattered.

I wasn’t going to have long before my memories faded. I grabbed the sheath for Mordred's sword cane, which had clattered to the ground when he'd left the building, and replaced the sword inside. It wasn't much of a weapon, but it might still come in handy. I took my gun from a nearby table; and looked out the window. The river Thames was just below me, maybe two hundred feet. A survivable distance, so long as my fading memories didn't take my magic with them.

The decision was made for me when armed guards burst into the room. I jumped out into the abyss, falling rapidly until my air magic slowed my descent and I hit the water as if jumping from only a few feet above it.

I part swam, part drifted in the strong current, allowing it to take me as far as I dared. The whole time everything became increasingly difficult to remember. When I was far enough from danger, I forced myself to swim to one side of the river, using an old metal ladder to climb up and into an abandoned parking lot for a derelict warehouse. 

I took one last look at the deep, dark water. I needed shelter, Mordred was not easily killed, and fighting him in the state I was in would not end well for me. I found an old black biro pen on the floor and some paper, the pen was broken and the paper torn and damp, but it allowed me to write my name before I put the paper into my pocket and dashed into the building. A few seconds later darkness took my mind.

*****

I opened my eyes to find myself in the same room I'd been in before my brain had gone nuts, a feeling I was becoming depressingly familiar with. I looked around and noticed Cassandra sitting alone by one of the many water features. "What just happened to me?"

"My daughter, granddaughter, and I are Fates. Each of us holds a mastery over the past, present or future. As the oldest of us, mine is the past. I unlocked one of your memories, or at least allowed it to become clearer."

"I fought Mordred. I escaped from him and that asshole Achilles." I shook my head in a futile attempt to clear it. "What do you want from me? And what did your daughter mean when she said she touched me to get things rolling?" I searched the room for the two other Fates. "Where are they anyway?"

"Gone outside, it's easier if I explain everything." She picked up a bottle of water from the table and offered it to me. "You should drink. Visions can have some tiring effects on people."

I took a long drink of the cool water. "Now, please explain."

"The Fates are not merely powerful psychics. As I said, we have mastery over a person's past, present and future. Between the three of us, we can see far into the past or future of someone we touch. My daughter sees the present, but doesn't need contact with a person to have a vision. She has flashes of what is happening now, usually within a few months before or after the current date. We'd wondered what had happened to you since you rescued us and had tried to find you, but with little success. A few months ago my daughter had a vision of you in Whitechapel and realised that your memories had been blocked.

"A plan was put into motion to help you. We knew where you'd be and what day, so it was easy for my daughter to bump into you and touch your hand. That small contact started bleeding your blocked experiences into you."

"So the reason I started knowing how to kill people was because of that touch?"

Cassandra nodded. "Grace used a lot of power to do that. She passed out in the car and didn't wake for three days."

"What else did you do?"

"Nothing," she said. "We knew that your friend's brother would betray you and involve our old captors. That you in turn would meet Jenny, and that she would spark your memories to come through."

"How did she do that?"

"My daughter, Grace was responsible for that, as well. Allowing your experiences to trickle through into your conscious meant that any further contact with a psychic would widen the hole. Jenny is very powerful. Her touch was all that was needed to accelerate the flow of memories."

"So eventually I'll remember everything?"

"Sort of," Cassandra said and raised her hands to subdue my next comment. "They will continue to come out, but you will have no frame of reference for them. You won't be able to put them in chronological order, or even distinguish actual memories from dreams or fantasies you may have had. The only way to totally recover your memories is to have the blood magic curse removed."

"And how do I do that?"

Cassandra looked nervous, almost as if she didn't want to answer my question. "There are two ways. The first is the most difficult—find the sorcerer who originally placed the curse, and have him remove it."

There was more chance of me landing on the moon than getting Mordred to remove the curse. "I think we can skip that one," I said.

"The other way is to have another blood magic user remove it. This isn't always easy. If the user isn't powerful enough, it could jumble your existing memories up with the blocked ones, and turn you into mindless husk."

"What aren't you telling me?"

Cassandra sighed and closed her eyes. "The first requires only the original caster of the curse. The second will require blood. Not necessarily human blood, I might add, but something must die for the curse to be removed."

"So to remove the curse, whoever does it may have to kill someone?" That wasn't even close to being an option.

"Not necessarily," Cassandra argued. "If you can convince the person to use animals, then the spell to remove the curse may not be as powerful, but it should get the job done."

"So, to get my memories back, I need to find a blood mage. Which Mars Warfare probably has in spades."

Cassandra nodded. 

"And then what? Why did you do this for me? What do you want out of it?"

She didn't speak for some time, and when she did her words were spoken softly, a hint of pleading behind them. "For a decade we have run from place to place, hiding who we are in an effort to stay one step ahead of the world we left behind. We are tired of running, we like living here, we like our lives, and we like ridding the world of the knowledge of how to create more Fates. We need your help. We need you to stop those people from finding us. But to do that, you need to be whole again."

 "You
want
me to get grabbed by Achilles and his psychotic friends?"

Cassandra hesitated and then nodded once. "We can't think of another way. And I know that what we ask is a lot, but Grace's visions say that you must give yourself over to these people."

A horrible thought occurred to me. "Did you know that Holly was going to get hurt?"

"You have to understand," she said. "The timeline is flexible, there are many versions of events that could unfold, and we don't always see what happens."

"Did. You. See?"

"Yes."

Anger bubbled to the surface. "You mean, telling me would have changed your precious path."

Cassandra met my gaze and never wavered. "Yes, it would have. Telling you what was going to happen would have gotten you and Holly killed. Those were the only alternatives—let her become injured or let you both die. Do you have any idea what it's like to know that if you try and stop something horrible, some unmentionable evil from happening, that it might make things worse?"

The fury that Cassandra put in her words took me aback. I couldn't imagine living with the knowledge that allowing a horror to take place was the better of two evils. "You should have told me," was all I could manage, my anger having vanished.

Cassandra's face softened. "No, we couldn't."

"So why tell me now? Why explain what I need to do."

"Because if you don't, we'll be dead within the week." Cassandra looked away and held a hand to her eyes, unwilling to let me see tears fall. "Achilles will find us, and he will rape and murder my daughter and granddaughter. He will do this in front of me, saving me till last. My daughter saw this, and at nearly three thousand years old, she still wept at what she knew would happen."

"But don't they need you alive? They want me to tell them where you are so they can take you back and go on controlling their own destiny."

"They do want us back, that's true. But for some reason the visions have changed, either we go free or we die. I don't know why that is."

"I can't just walk in there," I said. "They'll kill me and then Dani. And I won't let them take Dani."

Cassandra opened her mouth to speak, but a knock on the door changed her mind and she closed it. "You should go. My daughter says that your friends will need you."

"How..."I started.

"The three of us are linked, what one sees, we all see if necessary. And you're needed back at Francis'."

I started to ask another question when my mobile rang. I hastily answered it. "Francis..."

"Nate," Laurel said, breathless and pained. "They came for her, Nate. They took Dani."

Chapter 34

The door to Francis' subway home was destroyed. Pieces of it hung uselessly from its hinges. It could no more stop a man than a light breeze. I ran past it and down the steep staircase, dread and fear building up inside me, threatening to stop my legs from moving, less I see something I wished to forget.

"Francis," I called out as I reached the bloodstained platform. Smears of red adorned the walls and floor, some ending at the side of the platform. At least two bodies lay on the disused train tracks, both of them in the same uniforms as those who worked with Achilles.

 "Francis," I shouted once more after stepping into his work area, which now resembled a bomb blast. Anything that hadn't been nailed down covered the floor, most of it broken, none of it replaceable.

"Nate," a female voice called out from Francis' office.

I found Laurel kneeling on the floor, covered in blood; Jerry lay next to her, his head in her lap, his eyes looking up at the ceiling as fear wracked his face. One arm, from just below the elbow, was missing, leaving jagged lumps of bare flesh. A belt had been wrapped around his bicep, stopping the loss of more blood, but he needed a hospital. And soon. 

"Laurel," I said and she looked up at me, her blood soaked face unable to hide the anguish it showed. "He needs a hospital."

She shook her head. "He won't make it," she said. "I've given him something for the pain, but he won't let me make him into a vampire."

"I can't live forever," Jerry said weakly. "Not even for the woman I love."

"I can not let you die," Laurel yelled at Jerry, who raised his good hand and placed it in her's, squeezing gently. "Please, let me..."

Jerry shook his head, the movement small and barely noticeable, before looking up at me. "They took Dani," he said in between coughs. "We had no chance. I brought her into the office to hide, but that damn stone cunt ripped my arm off."

"You should let Laurel turn you, Jerry," I said. "It's got to be better than dying like this."

"What if the power drives me mad? What if I kill innocent people?" he looked back at the Laurel. "You say this won't happen, that you'll help me, but we both know there's no way of predicting how I'll react."

 "I'll make sure it doesn't happen," she pleaded before looking up at me. "Make him agree." Her words came out angry, hurt, but as much as she wanted Jerry to be with her, she would not go against his wishes. But that didn't stop her fighting him until he changed his mind.

"Why don't you inject him with vampire blood?" I suggested.

Laurel shook her head. "He's already had it once, a few years ago. Doing it again would heal his wounds, but drive him insane."

I tried to think of a way I could possibly help. There had to be something I could do. "If you do this, if you become a vampire," I started. "I'll make sure you never hurt an innocent."

"How?" he asked.

"Because if you do, I'll kill you," I said. "Let her save your life."

Jerry stared at me for a heartbeat. "I'll hold you to that."

I stood. "Now let Laurel save your damn life." Laurel's relief was almost palpable. 

"Where's Francis?" I asked her.

"Hospital room," she said and I left before she could start turning him, closing the office door behind me and running toward Francis.

I found him sitting beside the obviously dead Robert. The mute man was missing part of his chest. "I'm sorry," I said.

"He fought the gargoyle. But apparently even werewolves can't survive having their heart punched out of their chest." 

"They took Dani."

Francis nodded. "We were out matched. They came during this morning when the vampires were sleeping. Hell,
I
was sleeping until it was too late. How's Jerry?"

"Laurel's turning him now," I said and covered Robert's body with a sheet from the floor. "Where are your vampires?"

Francis didn't bother to hide his shock. "He agreed? And the vampires are resting; it is still daylight out after all. I don’t need any more angry and tired vampires wanting revenge.” 

I told Francis what I'd said to Jerry.

Francis raised an eyebrow. "Did you mean it?"

I nodded. "Of course."

"My vampires are dealing with the removal of bodies. We managed to kill a few of the attackers before they got away." There was an uncomfortable silence between us for what felt like an eternity. "You've changed, Nate," Francis said. "You never would have said that before. Whoever you used to be, it sounds like he was capable of a lot." He pointed to a small MP3 player on the floor. "They left you a message."