The Magic of the Sword (The Box book 3)

Chapter One

A shoulder slams into mine. By the time I've spun around to face my attacker, I've already called enough magic to knock someone unconscious with a single touch. When I realize the person who hit me is a girl not much older than me, I freeze in place. She mouths the word 'sorry' over the deafening music before bouncing off to rejoin her friends.

Only once she's gone am I able to relax enough to release the spell. I have no idea how I managed to tense so quickly. Up until the moment she hit me, I’d been having fun. The music is decent and I haven't danced so much in way too long. Now I can't even shuffle my feet.

Sin picks her way through the crowd, pausing to wiggle her fingers at a few people before stopping in front of me and handing me the bottle of water she's carrying. In her other hand is a large mug of beer, which she takes a gulp of.

Isn't this place the best? She has to shout for me to hear her over the club's noise.

She's too consumed by the music to notice I don’t answer. She spins in a circle as the song changes without so much as a pause, and throws one hand in the air, bouncing it up and down, matching the rhythm. Her chin length navy blue hair falls over her eyes, giving me a chance to take some deep breaths to calm down without her noticing.

It doesn’t help.

The crowd’s energy, fun only minutes ago, suddenly overwhelms me. I glance down at the bottle I hold. The water swishes inside the container as my hand shakes from the burst of adrenaline still racing through me. The room seems to be shrinking and all of the dancers move in way too close. The lack of space is suffocating. I need to get out.

My attempt to show Sin I’m too hot by fanning myself goes unnoticed. A group of school friends she introduced me to earlier have grabbed her attention and she is fully into whatever causes them all to laugh. They'd been friendly enough with me earlier, but now I've stopped dancing, they don't seem to remember I exist. 

When the song shifts once more, the group gets really excited. They drag Sin in the direction of one of the speakers, leaving me to fend for myself. I watch them for a moment, debating whether or not I should follow. I wish I could shake whatever has gotten into me so I can go back to dancing. Instead, I turn around and head for the exit.

The room is packed with people. More shiny dresses and tight pants than I thought I’d see in my lifetime, all stuffed into the small space. And I know there are a ton more people in similar party wear outside, hoping to get in. I'm barely able to pick my way through the crowd. I’m concentrating so hard on where I want to go, I don’t notice him at first. As I squeeze between a group of girls dancing in a tight circle and a bunch of guys working up the nerve to approach them, my eyes drift across the room to him.

He meets my gaze for a second and then disappears behind the crowd. It was only a glimpse and yet there's no doubt in my mind about who I’ve seen.

Al.

Suddenly the uneasy feeling I've been dealing with makes sense. It's been so long since I've felt the magic of a wizard, I hadn’t recognized the sensation. Last time I’d felt it was when Al and I were fighting Stewart. The wizard followed Al and I to Gran’s house and was about to steal my magic when Al saved me. In doing so, he absorbed Stewart’s magic and became the very thing he’d been trying to save me from.

And then he disappeared from my life.

I shift directions in order to follow him, and this time I'm less polite as I shove my way through the crowd. By the time I make it to the other side of the room, he's nowhere to been found. There is, however, an ‘employee's only’ door. When I check the handle, I notice not only is it unlocked, it's also been tampered with by magic.

He's gone this way.

I take a glance back to where Sin still dances with her friends. She hasn’t noticed I’m gone. And no one else sees me by the door. I slip out of the club’s main room and into an empty corridor. A glass emergency door leads out to a large black garbage bin. I can see the shadowy figures of a couple of people smoking, but they aren't paying any attention to me. The only other exit is a wooden door at the far end of the hall with a graffiti covered 'roof access' sign next to it.

Now I understand what I'm sensing, it's easy to tell Al's gone up the stairs. The trail of magic he left behind might as well have been arrows pointing the way.

Going after him is my only option. It's been almost two years since I last saw him and even now my entire body hums after only one glimpse. And yet, I have no idea what to expect when I find him. He's obviously running away from me for a reason. He could be trying to protect me by keeping a distance between us, or this could be his way of leading me into a trap.

I use my finger like a knife to cut the air next to my hip. A hole opens, allowing me access into a magic pocket I created a while ago. I find the hilt of my sword and draw it from the space.

I drew the sword to help ease my nerves, but now it’s in my hand, I realize I’ve only made things worse. Practicing with a sword in protective gear is one thing. Using the weapon against a real person is something else entirely.

After everything with Stewart, I decided to cut back on dance and focus on my taekwondo as well as take some fencing classes. I knew one day I’d find Al, and knowing how to use a sword would be important when I did. I never thought he’d find me first.

Every muscle in my body is tense, my walk up the stairs slow and mechanical. He's up there, I can feel him from this distance, or at least I think it's him I sense. The patchwork of magic isn't quite the same as what he stole from Stewart. It feels even more tainted, if possible. The magic is fractured in so many pieces; I don't understand how he's able to keep it all together.

For a minute I think perhaps he hasn't when I sense a chunk of the magic shift its position and move away from the door. But then I understand what's happening. There’s more than one wizard on the roof.

I'm walking into an ambush.

Of course I am. If the person I'd seen was actually Al, which I'm starting to doubt, he was obviously luring me up here the entire time. And I'd fallen for it, like some love sick teenager. I'd gone over this situation hundreds of times in my head, and yet I still walked right into the trap.

Al doesn't care about me. He's a full wizard now and all he wants is more magic. Both Sin and Rose told me he’d lose his humanity if he ever got one taste of magic. I’d seen it for myself after he killed Stewart and tried to attack me.

The problem is, though I now know the situation is a trap, it’s too late for me to avoid it. By now they'll have sensed me the same way I've sensed them, and if I try to turn around and run back the way I came, they'll chase after me. Bringing a sword fight into a crowd of people is a good way to get some innocent person hurt.

I shift the weight of my blade in my hand and tell my nerves to shut up. If I have any chance of coming out of this situation alive, I need to react, not think. Thinking will only get me killed.

Though having a plan would be nice.

No second guessing. I take the last of the stairs two at a time and do a summersault as I burst through the door. A sword slices the air above me as I roll. As I’d expected, at least one wizard tried to catch me off guard when I came through the doorway.

The moment I push myself onto my feet, I’m forced to block an attack from a second swordsman. I push out with my free hand to smash him in the stomach with my own physical force as well as a touch of magic to knock him back a few feet. The second I'm sure the spell connects, I spin to meet the blade of a third attacker. We dance for a few minutes, our blades meeting in a clash of sound and magical sparks. When he takes a wrong step on the uneven ground, I bring him down with a blast of my magic and spin to face whoever is going to attack next.

I'm able to get my head around faster than my sword, which means I'm able to see a blade come down on me, but can't get my arm up and around in time to stop it.

As it's about to slice deep into my shoulder, another sword appears out of nowhere and stops the blade only inches from my skin. I don't take the time to worry about who saved me or why, I simply react. I lunge, a perfect hit. Except unlike all of the times I’ve done the move before in practice, the tip hasn't been dulled and there's no padding over my opponent’s stomach to protect him. My sword slides too easily into his gut, and for a horrifying moment, I can feel him struggling to free himself from the end of my blade.

I pull back as quickly as possible, and stare into the furious eyes of the wizard I skewered. Even with the wound, he manages to find the energy to bring his sword up to attack again. I'm too dumbfounded over the blood on my blade and the matching blood dripping down his shirt onto the ground to be able to react fast enough. Luckily my savior has no such problems.

In one swoop, he slices through the wizard's neck to cut off the man's head.

The sight of the wizard falling in two different directions should throw me into shock and remove my ability to notice anything around me. But instead I find myself going numb. I watch with dull curiosity as the wizard’s magic lifts from his body like a ghost, travels up the blade of the man who killed him, and slips into his body through the hand holding the sword.

I've seen the same thing happen once before. The only other time I'd watched a man die.

Al hardly reacts to his new power as he shoves me to the side in order to get an unobstructed view of the last standing wizard. They square off and then their swords begin to move, each trying to break through the other’s defense.

I can't take my eyes off Al. He pulses with magic in an unfamiliar way. With every wizard I’d seen before, though I admit there haven’t been many, I’d noticed his magic was a patchwork of different power, much like a poorly made quilt, with each patch containing the magic stolen from a different sorceress.

Al's magic looks similar to a degree, but instead of large patches, there are slivers of thousands of different sorceress’ magic forced together. The edges of many of the chunks are fraying or ripped entirely, and the entire source of his power is covered in darkness. Black as night around the edges, and pooling to a deep gray toward the center.

Protect her as much as you want, traitor, the wizard shouts. The Sword now knows where she is. We will have her one way or another.

I drag my eyes away from Al in time to see the wizard turn to run away. The rooftop we’re on gives him an easy escape in any direction. I know if he gets away, I’ll be spending the rest of my life running from him and every other wizard he tells about me.

While I reach inside myself to gather the magic to stop him, Al reacts faster. He throws his sword, guiding it with magic to pierce through the wizard's back. When he walks over to take back his sword from the body, I see another waft of magic leave the dead wizard to enter Al.

He takes the time, using the dead man’s clothes to clean the weapon while I stand like a lump staring at him. When he finally lifts his head to look up at me, I force myself to hold my sword as steady as possible toward him.

Don't move, I say, or I will kill you.

Chapter Two

Al does not have the right attitude toward my sword being pointed at him. I expect him to be upset or angry. Instead, he barely glances at me before making his way over to the man I knocked out. He runs his blade through his chest before I realize what he’s doing, and the wizard has only time to choke out one blood filled groan before succumbing to his wounds. I don’t need to check his pulse to know he’s dead; the magic flowing from him into Al is sign enough.

Al yanks his blade from the wizard, and I can feel my stomach turn in response. He kneels down and drags his fingers through the blood pooling around the body. When he lifts his bloody fingers toward his face as though he's either going to lick them or smear them over his skin, I find myself dropping my sword in order to race over and grab his wrist to stop him.

Consuming the other wizard's magic is bad enough. I'm not going to watch him taste blood as well.

I realize my mistake the second our skin touches. Energy explodes between us. With lightning speed he has both of my hands trapped behind my back. Every ounce of his focus is on me.

His eyes widen as though he's shocked to see me. Lou?

Although my gut reaction is to fight, I force myself to relax and I'm rewarded when his grip on my wrists loosens.

It's me, Al. I try to smile, but I'm sure it comes out more as a grimace. Luckily, he doesn't seem to notice. Can you let go?

His attention slips and his eyes seem to focus on something past me. I'm gripped with fear as I realize he's losing what little of his old self he’d managed to regain the moment we’d touched. And he's still holding my arms down. If I don't act first he’s going to treat me like an enemy, just as he had in Gran’s house after Stewart’s death. As I'm about to use whatever power is necessary to blast him off me, he releases me entirely and takes several steps back.

Not the time, he mutters to himself. Not the time or the place. Many things to do. Places I need to check. I can't be wasting time on pleasantries.

He walks away and looks like he's going to keep going right off the side of the building.

Wait. I reach forward with my magic to stop him if I need to, but as soon as it nears him, he stops on his own. For a moment, when he faces me, his eyes find mine and