I shook my head, impatient. “Call your brother. I need to know where Darma is.”
Dialle reached for me again. “They are in the park. I’ll take you there.”
We shimmered into the play area of the park. It was deserted now except for the nearly disintegrated body of something that looked demonic on the ground and a small knot of people who were huddled together around a small child a few yards from the exploded corpse. They kept glancing toward something in the distance and I followed their speculative gaze toward my sister, who was draped over Torre on a nearby park bench, sobbing hysterically.
Dialle and I stepped carefully around the nasty remains and headed for the bench. Torre looked up as we approached, his handsome, almost pretty face was filled with obvious discomfort at dealing with a hysterical female. He slid a look at his brother that spoke volumes.
We stopped in front of them. “Is she hurt?”
Torre shook his head, silky black hair swinging around his shoulders. “She has not been physically harmed. But her emotions are shattered.” He jerked his head toward the mess on the ground a few feet away. “She vanquished that to save the life of a human child.” He stopped speaking and shrugged as Darma’s sobs gained new intensity.
“Darma?”
She acted as if she hadn’t heard me.
“Darma!” The sobbing slowed and she looked up. Her pale face was splotchy and wet, her eyes red-rimmed with purple half moons under them. She was still beautiful. “You did what needed to be done. Now stiffen your spine. We need to talk.”
I knew from long years of dealing with my sister that she didn’t want pity or empathy. She responded well to stern instruction. Sitting up finally and running her sleeve over her cheeks to dry them, she sniffled one last time and nodded at Torre.
He stood up, rather enthusiastically I thought, and walked away with his brother. A few jolts of power from the two of them were all it took to clean up what was left of the demon.
Most of the humans had left. Only a woman and a small boy remained. As soon as the woman saw Dialle and Torre walk away she approached us, holding tightly to the little boy’s hand. She said nothing at first, only dropping to her knees in front of Darma.
For a brief moment I thought Darma was gonna scramble backward off the bench, her face was filled with such horror but she managed to hold it together as the woman grabbed her hand and kissed it. “God bless you, young lady. Thank you for saving my son. I’m sorry it has caused you such pain.”
Fresh tears flowed down Darma’s cheeks but she held herself together and straightened her spine, looking for all the world like a queen on her throne. She covered the woman’s hand with her own and squeezed. “I’m glad he’s safe. I would do it again for the same result.”
I felt my eyes widen. She would?
The woman smiled at her and stood. She pulled the little boy forward and told him to say thank you. As Darma shook her head to tell the woman it wasn’t necessary the little boy took it out of her hands. He climbed into Darma’s lap and gave her a loud, wet kiss on the cheek.
“I wuv you,” he said in his sweet, baby voice.
Darma watched them walk away and sobbed one last time. “I owe you a huge apology, Astra.”
I didn’t need her to elaborate on that and I didn’t want to see her suffer any more at the moment. “It’s all behind us now. I don’t want to hear any more about it.”
She sniffled and nodded. “Thank you for understanding.”
I sat down next to her on the bench. “We need to talk.”
“I know.”
I watched Dialle and Torre. They were sitting on the merry-go-round punching each other on the arm. I smiled. Men are such children.
I turned to look at her. “I have to say I’m shocked. I didn’t think you had the magic.”
She shrugged. I could tell she wanted to say something but was struggling with it. Finally she turned to me. “I’ve always had it. I just tried to deny it to myself and everybody else. But lately…” She looked at Torre, rubbing her arm thoughtfully. “It’s been harder to fight. I don’t know what’s going on. It’s as if there’s something changing. The wall I built between me and the magic is dropping and I can’t seem to stop it.”
I sat back on the bench and looked up at the purple sky. The mist was still above the trees but it felt as if it might be dropping. I shivered and my wrist pulsed suddenly. “Something is happening, Darma. I can feel it too. I think the safest thing to do is to train yourself in your magic since you can’t seem to stop it. It would be safer for everybody.”
She stared straight ahead, her eyes haunted. But she finally nodded. “I know you’re right. The truth is, it terrifies me not to have control over it. I could hurt somebody.” Her blue gaze raked the area of the playground that had been covered in demon parts only moments earlier.
I stood. “Then it’s settled, you’ll come work with me.”
She turned to me with a look of surprised horror on her face. “With you? I can’t do that.”
“It makes the most sense, Darma. I can train you in using your magic. And you can help me in the business.”
She shook her head, her face settling into the stubborn lines I knew only too well. “No, I won’t help you kill things for a living. That part of your life I don’t apologize for hating.”
I blew out a frustrated sigh. “They’re demons, Darma. They deserve vanquishing.” When she continued her stubborn refusal I lost my temper and surged to my feet. “I didn’t just wake up one day and decide to kill things you know, Darma. My job is really dangerous and sometimes it sucks. I didn’t choose this line of work, it needed to be done. It’s my calling.”
She stared at me for a long time and then slowly nodded her head. “In some part of my brain I know you are doing a job that needs to be done, Astra. I’m sorry that I don’t approve. I know it’s hard and I know it’s dangerous and I know that really you have no choice.” She touched my hand gently. “But don’t you see… I do have a choice. And I know that doing what you do would kill me slowly. I can’t be like you. Don’t ask me to be.”
I sighed. “Okay. I’ll let it go for now. But somebody needs to train you.”
She glanced toward the merry-go-round. “Torre can train me.”
I frowned. “Are you sure? He’s only familiar with dark magic. What about the light?”
Darma shrugged. “Father can help me with that.”
I stared at her for a long moment. For some reason she didn’t want me to help her. I had to respect that. Even if it wasn’t logical. I mean, after all, when was the last time my sister was logical?
Chapter Four
It Begins
The twisted veil distorts the minds, of all who magic lack,
And those who carry magic power, must ’round humans watch their backs.
Emo was sitting behind his desk when I got into the office the next morning. He was making notes rapidly as he listened to a conversation in private mode on his televisual.
I waved and walked past him into my office. I threw my long leather coat onto the chair by the door and shivered, rubbing my arms. The weather was unseasonably cold and the air was moist, making the cold sink deep into my bones. I suspected the thickening cloud of mist had something to do with the weather changes.
Standing behind my desk, I looked out of the window. The day beyond the glass was starting slowly. The sun was buried under a thick blanket of smothering mist. I’d been watching for the mist to begin dropping closer to the ground but so far it had stayed high in the sky. It was definitely thickening though and had begun to shift and roil as if something was stirring it up from the center, with the waves just now reaching the outer edges where I could see them.
Movement below caught my eye. Two men stood talking on the street and the conversation did not look friendly. One of them I recognized as a tenant in my office building.
Ralph Peters was the taller of the two men and had longish, curly black hair. I remembered he also had the most amazing hazel eyes with long lashes. I’d only spoken to him a handful of times but he seemed like a really nice guy.
He was talking animatedly to the other man, whom I didn’t recognize and his long arms were waving around as if he was getting passionate about their subject.
The shorter man was just standing there, his legs spread in a slightly hostile stance and his hands on his hips. I couldn’t see his face because his back was to the building but suddenly one of his hands shot out and his fist connected with Ralph’s attractive face.
Ralph went down like a stone.
“Holy shit!”
The man followed up the punch with a few brutal kicks to Ralph’s head and torso and then turned and walked away.
I turned away from my window and ran out of my office. Emo called out to me but I waved him off. “Call unplanned care.” Then I was in the flash elevator and heading down to street level.
Ralph was still lying on the sidewalk when I got outside. People had started gathering around him and one man was bent over him, checking for a pulse. The concerned citizen looked up when I pushed my way through the crowd and apparently recognized me as someone who should take charge of the situation.
“His pulse is a bit weak. He seems to have broken his head open when he fell.”
I looked at the spreading slide of blood on the sidewalk and cursed silently. Dropping to my knees beside him, I glanced up at the man hovering over Ralph. “I need some room. Get these people out of here.”
What I didn’t want to tell him is that I planned to use my power to heal Ralph as much as possible and I didn’t want the people who were standing around to catch any magic backlash.
He nodded and stood up, trying to push people back. “She needs some room to work here, people. How about you move on. Things are under control now.”
I heard a few of the gawkers move away but several people refused to leave. I could hear hostile murmurings behind me about magic users and tempting the devil. The small hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention.
I tried to ignore the wall of hostility behind me as I began to pull my power forward. If there were magic haters in the crowd I’d just have to deal with them after I saved Ralph. A burst of wind tossed my hair into my face and the crowd behind me started to fall to the side. I felt a warm, solid presence beside me and looked up into Emo’s worried face.
“Astra. Let me help you get him in the air vehicle. Unplanned care isn’t coming. We’ll need to take him in.”
“I’ll just…”
He gave me a sharp negative jerk of his head. “No. Let’s get him into the vehicle.” He raised dark eyebrows at me in warning and I hesitated, not willing to let a bunch of magic bigots keep me from doing the right thing for the man on the ground in front of me. Finally I sighed and nodded. I could help him better and ultimately faster if we got him away from the crowd hovering over us.
Between us we carried Ralph to Emo’s sleek, black air vehicle and laid him down on the floor behind the seats. As Emo input directional instructions for the unplanned care unit I bent over Ralph, pulled my power forward and focused it carefully into him. He had at least three broken ribs and a crack in his nose from the punch. I healed the gash to the back of his head, which was bleeding a lot but probably wasn’t life-threatening and then did what I could to align his ribs and nose and seal them back up. It was only a temporary fix but it would get him safely into unplanned care.
Then I flopped into the seat next to my partner and met his gaze. “He’ll be okay. What happened back there, Emo?”
He frowned. “I’m not sure. I’m seeing signs of a growing level of,” he frowned, “I guess you’d have to call it aggression…among the humans. A new anti-magic feeling is taking hold. I’ve been taking calls all morning from dark worlders asking if we have any jurisdiction over the humans. Apparently angry humans are attacking and the dark worlders can’t fight back because they’ll be marked for vanquishing.”
Emo looked at me and shook his dark head. “This is a problem we didn’t foresee when we let the human government set the rules.”
I sat back and scrubbed both hands over my face. It wasn’t bad enough I had to deal with the big, dark and uglies. Now I had to play referee between humans and the dark world, with the humans as the aggressors. “Shit.”
Emo nodded. “Yeah.”
Emo pulled his air vehicle up to the Emergency area of the building and an arm came out and locked onto it. The emergency med techs tucked Ralph onto a stretcher and carefully lifted him out of the vehicle.
I followed them into the building to give what little information I could about him; mostly just his name and the location of his business, so they could contact his partner for more info.
A familiar voice hailed me as I watched them taxi Ralph toward a surgical room on an air gurney.
Dr. Lee smiled at me when I turned and held out her hand, clasping mine warmly. “Mx. Phelps, what brings you here to see us again?”
I returned the smile, shaking my head. “Unfortunately I had to bring a fellow tenant in. He was beaten up on the street.” I watched her face carefully as I went on, “By a magic hater.”
Her triangular eyes narrowed slightly before she looked away. She put a hand on my shoulder and walked me away, to a slightly more private area of the room. “That change we were talking about a few days ago?”
I nodded.
“I’m more convinced now than ever. It’s affecting the human race too.”
My eyebrows peaked.
She nodded. “I know it sounds paranoid. But I have numbers to back it up. This facility has never been busier. I’m logging four times as many attacks from magic wielders every day and ten times more attacks from non-magic humans. That’s a substantial change in volume.”
I had to agree. “What is it, Dr. Lee? What’s causing all this violence?”
She glanced at a med crew passing within inches of us, guiding an air gurney with a fat woman who had blood all over her pudgy face toward surgery. When her strange yellow eyes returned to me they were guarded. Her voice was nearly inaudible. “It’s in the prophesies, Mx. Phelps. You’ll need to look for it there.”