Magi Saga 1: Epic Calling (46 page)

‘Good, then we have to go, now, my guess is that he’s right on our tail, he probably knows roughly where we are, and he certainly knows where we’re headed. Come on.’

They set off down the street once more, alternately walking or jogging depending on how busy it was and how tired they were.

After what seemed like hours they found themselves walking up the street to Waterloo Station, the sky brightening as the city woke up, and Raven came to a brief stop outside. He reached inside his back pocket, pulled out a strip of tickets, and handed them out.

‘Right, we’re getting on the Euro Star, but I have a bad feeling about this, I think he’ll try for us again here in the chaos of the morning crowds.’

Stephan felt his stomach do a somersault and felt slightly sick, He guessed they all looked quite worried as Raven then said, ‘Don’t worry, trust me, I’ll get you through this. Come on, let’s not waste time.’

Stephan took hold of Fran’s hand, she had hold of Liz’s, and they followed Raven onto the huge concourse of the station through huge entrance ways filled with people coming and going. The concourse was busy this morning, many of the commuters stood watching the electronic time tables, waiting to find out which platform their train would depart from. Large prefab stands with shops inside them dotted the middle of the waiting area, creating barriers and places to hide.

Stephan didn’t like it, he felt vulnerable, but there was no time to waste. He followed Raven and dived into the crowds after him. They weaved through the people and could begin to see the Euro Star check in ahead of them.

Maybe they would make it without incident, maybe Nate hadn’t managed to follow them or predict where they were heading. Stephan’s heart lifted.

Liz yelped and pulled back on her sister which pulled on Stephan. They looked back and saw that she was looking off to one side, they followed her gaze, and knew what they would see.

Nate, a wicked smile on his face, striding through the crowds towards them, and Stephan felt sick again.

‘Raven,’ he called looking back to the Magi, but he wasn’t there, he had disappeared. ‘Shit.’

‘What? What is it?’ Fran asked, panic in her voice.

‘Nothing, come on, let’s go,’ he covered, and he pulled the two girls onwards.

‘Where’s Raven?’ Fran asked. ‘I can’t see him’

‘What?’ Liz said, panicked.

‘I don’t know, come on, let’s get to the train.’ Stephan felt scared, where the hell had Raven gone too, he said he would protect them, he said to trust him, and now he had disappeared just as Nate arrived. Where the hell was he?

‘You don’t…you mean you’ve lost him?’ Fran’s voice went almost to a screech as she said it and she pulled Stephan to a stop again. It was noisy in here, the crowds and the announcers voice all making far too much noise.

‘Don’t stop!’ Stephan said, urgency in his voice, straining it, and he pulled Fran onwards again.

‘Oh shit, we’re dead, we’re dead…’ Fran was saying to herself, he couldn’t hear Liz, she’d gone a bit quiet on seeing Nate again.

He glanced back, Liz still followed them, and beyond her, striding through the crowds, followed Nate, with a look on his face that scared Stephan more than anything he had ever seen before. It was a primal fear, because he knew Nate would kill him, and he wouldn’t stand a chance.

But he didn’t let the fear grip him, he needed to get to the train, Raven must be there, waiting for them, he must be. Stephan pulled the girls round the corner of one of the stands, and there stood the Euro Star terminal, just ahead of them.

As Liz rounded the corner of the stand behind Stephan and Fran she yelped as she saw something and pulled back on her sister slightly. Stephan and Fran looked back to see Raven, who had been hiding round the corner of the stand, they had passed him without seeing him.

He stepped out just as Nate rounded the corner of the stand in a jog, holding his elbow up and out to the height of Nate’s head. Nate’s face and Raven’s elbow connected with sudden and jarring force, Stephan could have sworn there was a brief small flash of light where the elbow connected with Nate’s nose, but maybe it had been his imagination, the sound seemed odd too, it wasn’t quite there, it sounded muffled. There was more to this attack then Stephan could make out.

Nate didn’t fall, but stood still for a second, utter shock on his face, as blood began to leak from his nose. Raven, moving smoothly from the elbow strike, put his hand on Nate’s face, and as Stephan watched, Nate’s eyes closed and his body relaxed.

Once more Stephan felt the odd sensation he got in the presence of magic as the world and reality seemed paper thin and false. It was like feeling dizzy but without the disorientation. The shadows around Raven and Nate seemed to move but didn’t and it felt almost as if a fundamental truth of the world was about to be revealed, but then pulled away at the last second.

Raven guided Nate as his body dropped towards a chair set up against the side of the trade stand, and sat him in it. Removing his hand from Nate’s face, the blood was gone.

Stephan looked about them at the people stood nearby, but no one had been watching this, not one person took the slightest bit of notice.

Raven turned to Stephan and the twins, ‘Come on, quickly. He won’t stay like that forever.’

‘You didn’t kill him?’

‘He’s just sleeping for a while, hopefully long enough for us to be on our way, come on, let’s go.’

The three of them followed Raven into the Euro Star check in and managed to just catch the first train of the day that had been waiting to depart. Within half an hour, they were sat in the carriage and watching the city fade away to countryside outside the window.

Stephan had relaxed, he sipped on a can of cola as the tension drained from his body finally. He felt safe, for the moment, across from him on the other side of the table, the Twins sat there quietly, also nursing drinks. No one had really spoken yet, but Raven seemed to still be alert and a touch nervous where he sat next to Stephan.

Stephan felt he had to break the silence somehow; they can’t sit here and not speak, not when the man who’s helping them can use Magic.

‘So, Raven, how did you find us then? You came right to us in the police station.’

‘Through the use of my Magic, I’m able to locate people and things fairly easily, but each time I tried it on you guys, I couldn’t get it to work, which was because of that book. It interferes with that kind of Magic, so I kept on doing it, hoping you would leave the book somewhere. So when I suddenly found that the locating Magic worked, which must have been when the police took the book away from you, I Ported right to you.’

‘Ported?’

‘Teleported,’ said Raven

‘Oh, of course. Well, yeah, the Police needed to examine and log the book apparently, which is probably how Nate found us too.’

‘Most likely.’

‘So, it really is Magic you’re using then,’

Raven looked down at Stephan and smiled. ‘Yeah, it is. It’s real. I hope I didn’t scare you with it.’

‘No, no you didn’t. It was, um, surprising, to see it in real life, you know, up close and personal like. But I wasn’t scared, not of your Magic.’

‘I suppose you’ve had plenty of other things to be scared off recently, haven’t you.’

‘Yeah,’ Stephan said. ‘So you’re a Wizard then?’

‘A Magi, but yes.’

‘Oh, a Magi, okay, and there’s lots of Magi in the world?’

‘At least ten or fifteen thousand, not many.’

‘Thousands is loads.’ Stephan said.

‘But when you think about the population of a major city, New York for example, which has something like six million people in it; a few thousand Magi seems a lot less.’

‘When you put it like that, I suppose so.’

Stephan continued to ask a few more questions, the twins listening in and commenting occasionally. Soon they were in the tunnel, and leaving England, on their way to France.

During the journey, Stephan showed Raven the book, leaving it in the bag so as not to attract attention. Raven seemed happy with it and left it in the hands of Stephan, telling him to keep hold of it.

A couple of hours later, although still early in the morning, they arrived in Paris, their trip to France being largely uneventful. Raven took out three passports for Stephan, Liz and Fran from his pocket and handed them out. Stephan looked inside his and was surprised to find that it was actually his.

‘I got them from your parent’s houses earlier on. I thought we might need them.’

Stephan was more than a little impressed with Raven’s foresight. ‘I wondered how you got us onto the train in London,’ he said. He had sat with the girls while Raven had dealt with check in.

Leaving the terminal without problems they hailed a taxi and got in, Raven gave the driver an address in fluent French and sat back in his front seat. He turned and looked at his three charges in the back seat. ‘You all OK?’

‘We’re fine,’ Stephan said, Fran and Liz agreed.

‘We’ll be better once we’re at wherever you’re taking us,’ Fran added.

Stephan agreed.

The Taxi cut through the traffic, the lights nearly always green and the way nearly always clear. Raven winked at them at one point, he’s using Magic again Stephan thought, and he realised that he could feel it.

That unreal feeling, when the shadows seem to move but don’t, when the dimensions of things seem to change but stay the same, it was Magic being used.

‘Can you feel it?’ he asked Fran and Liz, ‘Can you feel the Magic?’

‘I can, I thought you might not have noticed it.’ Fran said.

‘I’ve felt it a few times, at the police station, at Waterloo, and now here, but I only just figured it out.’

‘Yeah, I felt it too, it's odd isn’t it.’

‘A bit weird yeah,’ Liz joined in.

The driver yelled something in French, and the Taxi’s tires screeched as the car slammed into the side of a black car that had pulled out in front of them. Stephan jerked forward from the impact before falling back in his seat as the sounds of the two cars hitting each other died away with a tinkling of metal.

He looked up at the car they had hit, and Stephan’s jaw dropped to see a Man leaning out the front passenger side window that was facing them, holding a shot gun and aiming it at the driver.

‘Get down!’ Raven shouted.

Stephan ducked as the shot gun went off, hitting the man sat in the driver’s seat in front of Fran. ‘Holy shit, what the hell’s going on?’ he shouted.

The twisted reality feeling came on once more and there was a small explosion outside, Stephan looked up and saw that the Shotgun had exploded in the shooters face. Blood splattered everywhere and the man wailed.

Stephan was suddenly aware of the other people walking up to the car, surrounding it on all sides, all of them carrying guns, and off to the right, on Stephan’s side, there stood Vito, his hands behind his back and a smug grin on his face.

‘Oh no you don’t!’ muttered Raven, and Stephan felt Magic all about him again. The car in front of them which they had hit, suddenly leapt up into the air a good twenty or thirty feet while the Taxi’s engine revved into life again, the car wheel spun and then shot forward as the tires caught the road, taking them underneath the jumping car.

Stephan got thrown back into his seat by the force of the acceleration and kept tight hold of the bag. Then there came another surge of Magic which Stephan felt a second before the effect.

The door next to him flew off its hinges with a screech and pop of torn metal, and then he himself flew sideways from the car. He made a last ditch attempt to grab the seat, something, anything, but it was too late and he hit the road, hard.

He groaned from the pain, and then suddenly, realising the danger, started to get up, only to look up into the barrel of a shot gun pointed at his face. A man in a suit muttered something in French, probably something like, don’t move, but Stephan wasn’t sure. He caught a last glimpse of the taxi disappearing off down the road, Fran and Liz’s terrified faces in the back window.

There was a loud crash as the car that Raven had made jump in the air, slammed back down and came to a rest.

Stephan sat back onto the curb, keeping a tight hold of the bag containing the book as Vito walked up the road and came to a stop before him. Other men were stood about, pointing their shot guns at him now.

‘Stephan, you shouldn’t have run out on me. That was unkind. You’ve forced us to do things the hard way, now give me the bag.’

‘You’re only going to kill me anyway so get on with it, you can have it when I’m dead.’ Stephan said with spite. At least Fran and Liz were safe he thought, that was the main thing.

‘Stephan, that’s very noble of you, and I will kill you if I have to, but you have a chance to survive this, if you cooperate. There’s no reason for you to die. We need to ask you some questions, so you’ll be coming with us to Rome, but once we’re through with you, we’ll let you go. But only if you work with us.’

Stephan looked up at Vito, he didn’t seem to be lying, why would he. He could kill him right here and now and be done with it, there would be no repercussions for a Magi after all. Maybe if he played along, there might be a chance for escape. He made up his mind, and handed the bag to Vito, who unzipped the main pocket and pulled out the golden book.