“How many are hurt?”
“We don’t know.” The pain in Grayson’s voice was easy to hear even in my less-than-ideal state. “The fighting is still happening.”
As we made our way through the room toward the exterior doors, several people who worked alongside Grayson as doctors and nurses helped the dozens of wounded.
“You need to get the security shut off,” I told Grayson. “Too many people in here don’t have the power to heal properly. The bracelets don’t let enough power through.”
Grayson barked an order to a nearby nurse, who ran off to do as he was told.
“You must be a fun boss to work for,” I said, and swayed slightly as we reached the exit.
“There’s a time for shouting, Nate.”
I took two steps outside of the building and felt my magic wash over me, filling me, healing me. Grayson let go of me, and I dropped to my knees.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I nodded. “Body is healing. It uses a lot of power, but I had some souls stored up.”
“Won’t that leave you vulnerable?”
I noticed he didn’t ask who the souls had belonged to, nor how I’d come across them. At one point the idea of using my necromancy to take someone’s soul to use as a makeshift battery for my magic would have been difficult to imagine, but now . . . well, now times were different. I didn’t take souls lightly—it came with the unwanted gifts of living that person’s life, of seeing every awful thing they’d ever taken part in. But sometimes that was necessary, and using my necromancy to power my magic was considerably more powerful than using my magic alone.
I looked around the chaos-strewn parking area where Tommy and his people were fighting for their lives. Several dead enemies lay on the ground, most missing parts of their bodies . . . fighting against a werewolf of Tommy’s caliber often left his opponent with fewer limbs than when they’d started.
“Nate,” Grayson said as I got back to my feet, feeling a lot more like my old self. “You’re going to be vulnerable without a soul to boost your power.”
Gray glyphs ignited over the backs of my hands and arms. “I won’t be for long.”
Grayson looked back into the reception area. “I need to go.”
“Help people. I’ll be fine.” I turned to face the battle and heard the war cry of one of the assailants as he ran toward me, a machete raised high above his head.
I flicked my hands toward him, and the shadows closest to him tore out of the ground, enveloping him as he screamed in fear. Several of the attackers closest to me stopped for a moment, and I noticed the fear on their faces. “I’ll be right back for the rest of you,” I told them, and sank into the shadows beneath my feet.
I ended up in my shadow realm. Every sorcerer who could use shadow magic had their own personal realm which they were able to move into and out of with ease. Once in the realm, I knew where nearby shadows back on the Earth realm were, and could move between them easily—essentially allowing me to teleport between shadows. Unfortunately it wore me out quickly, so I wasn’t able to do it for long distances, but it was useful in a pinch.
Also, as my would-be attacker discovered, I was able to drag people who couldn’t use magic into the shadow realm. He threw the machete at me, but the shadows around me leapt up, picking it out of the air where it vanished into the darkness around us.
“You can’t hurt me here,” I told him. I motioned to the tiny pockets of light, the locations of the Earth-realm shadows. The closest ray of light moved toward us in an instant. “That’s your way out.”
The man was terrified and clearly wanted out of the predicament I’d placed him in.
“Who sent you?” I asked.
“My Liege,” he said.
“Why are you here?”
“My Liege,” he snapped, seemingly angry.
“Is that all you can say?”
“My Liege, My Liege, My Liege!” He screamed the last word and sank to his knees. “My Liege, My Liege, My Liege.”
I sighed. “Someone broke your mind.”
He looked up at me.
“You were sent here to die. If you were ever captured, your mind would snap like a twig; you’d be able to say nothing but whatever they needed you to say. Blood magic did this. Very powerful blood magic.” I walked over to him and crouched. “I’m going to undo your shirt. I need to see if you have any marks.”
He tore his shirt open, the buttons making no sound as they hit the floor. A large blood-magic curse mark sat on his chest. It was different than the marks I’d seen on the man who had exploded in the reception area. The attacker kneeling beside me was never meant to take his own life. He hadn’t been a sorcerer, so had been given a different, but no less fatal, job.
I stood and pulled up my T-shirt. “Do you see the mark on my stomach?”
The man looked up and nodded as he saw the dark mark. I’d lost one a year ago, which had given me a further boost in magical power. Five down, two to go. The last mark was invisible and had been placed on my mind to ensure I remembered nothing of the first eight years of my life. I hadn’t even known of the final mark’s existence until a few years ago, and its discovery was still somewhat of a sore point.
“Someone put that mark there, and more like them. Someone cast a blood-magic curse on me so powerful hundreds had to die to fuel it. Do you remember anything about the person who did this to you?”
He shook his head. “My Liege, My Liege.” He tried to stop himself from saying it a third time. “My Liege.” He struck the floor beside him.
“You were told to come here, to kill and hurt, and in return you’d be given something. Power, money?”
He shook his head.
“Freedom?”
He looked up at me and nodded slightly.
“Freedom from what, though? You were in someone’s servitude?”
He shook his head.
“A prisoner?”
A nod.
I walked away as sounds began to gather in the darkness around us.
“It’s nothing to fear,” I told the man.
That was a lie, and it was an exceptionally big one. Somewhere out in the darkness was a wraith. All sorcerers who used shadow magic had one. They fed on anyone sent to the shadow realm. While I was here, the man was safe, but the second I left, the wraith would pounce, devouring the man to make me stronger.
“Ordinarily I might take your soul and see the information I need, but with your mind broken, I’m unlikely to see anything useful.”
The man stared at me.
“You shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t have tried to kill my friends. Did you see this My Liege person?”
He nodded.
“Just one person?”
He nodded again.
“A man?”
Another nod.
“Did you see his face?”
He shook his head.