Yes, he’d thrown the fireball; it was his magic boiling around up there. And yes, he must have done it in his sleep, something that hadn’t happened for . . . well, ever. And yes, that was the sort of thing that rookies did, young mages in training with too much power and too little discipline, which was why they were usually housed well away from everybody else, to avoid having them burn down whatever training facility they were attending.
So, what the hell was wrong with him?
His memory took that moment to kick back in, and he threw an arm over his eyes, staying flat on the floor whilst the vast ocean of his past beat at him and the fire seared him and the woman—the null witch, he supposed—did what nulls do and drank his magic, slowly returning the room to something like normality. Well, a normality of singed walls and burning curtains and an overhead light fixture that was now a smoking nub in the middle of a charred ceiling, but John didn’t feel like complaining.
It could have been worse.
It should have been worse.
Then somebody grabbed him.
It wasn’t Caleb, who was still glaring at him from across the room. It wasn’t even the null, who had collapsed onto a chair, her eyes bright and her face all but glowing with the power she’d absorbed. No, the panicked woman slapping at his smoking clothes and running soft little hands over his torso, checking for burns, was somebody else.
“Where are they?” The blonde in his arms turned on Caleb, frantic and furious. “How did they get past you?”
“They didn’t.”
“You killed them?” She stared around, as if expecting to find a pile of smoking bodies in the corner. Which wouldn’t be that strange around here, John thought grimly, and tried to get up.
That was obviously not the right move.
“Stay put!” she snarled, and jumped to her feet.
John stayed put, mainly because his brain was still trying to remember how his legs worked, but also because memories of the woman above him, what felt like a lifetime of them, were suddenly pouring through him, a cascade that included a great many things, but not her standing protectively over him, blue lightning shielding her hands, and her eyes pale fire.
Okay, John thought dizzily. I’ve missed a few things.
And then the ceiling caved in.
Chapter Two
B ecause I said so.” John Pritkin looked back at the angry faced mage behind him, whose cloak was billowing out in the cold wind, snapping almost as much as his dark eyes. And wondered for the tenth time if it wouldn’t have been better to come alone.
The “man” was an angry pup, barely out of his teens. He was also the only dark face in a sea of pale, Anglo-Saxon sneers, one eager to prove himself to the mages who hadn’t bothered to conceal their disdain at John’s presence. Or their suspicion: the last thing they wanted on a demon hunt was another demon.
Or half of one, in John’s case.
Something that was demonstrated again when the pup snarled: “I don’t take orders from you!” and started forward.
John’s arm caught him across the chest. “And because Marsden said so.”
“Unhand me mage—or whatever you are!” The unsaid word floated in the air, silent only because Jonas Marsden was respected that much, being head of the War Mage Corps, the military branch of the world’s leading magical authority, the Silver Circle.
The Corps, a cross between a magical police force and the Royal Marines, supposedly kept order in the supernatural community. The “supposedly” came from the fact that they had been known to make bad matters worse, blustering into situations they knew little about and imposing “order” by cursing the hell out of anyone who opposed them—or looked at them sideways. They had some genuinely talented mages among their number, but that was a two-edged sword.
People able to control a situation by force were unlikely to have learned any other methods, such as the ones needed here.
“I haven’t put my hands on you,” John said evenly, reigning in his own temper, which was a feat these days. “But something else might, if you go charging in there—"
“Damned amateur!”
“—and there’s no rescue clause in my contract.”
The boy immediately went from hot to boiling, bristling with so much magic that it threatened to burn John’s skin, even through several layers of spelled cloth. He had power, this one; John would give him that. And an honesty the others lacked.
Maybe he could be useful, after all.
“Are you threatening me?” the boy snarled.
John looked up from securing his safety line. “No. I am saying that something else, something unknown, something that has already killed five men, several of them competent mages, is down there.”
He gestured over the edge of the cliff, where the young war mage had decided to have this conversation and where the wind was threatening to blow them all out to sea. They couldn’t see the dark slit of a cave entrance from here with the night and the crashing surf hiding it. But it was there, two thirds of the way down what the locals called a crag and he called a towering precipice.
Bloody Cornwall.
“And you’re going to play the hero and go kill it,” the boy sneered.
“No, I’m going to find out what it is.”
“How?”
“Like this,” John said, and pushed him off the cliff.
Of course, he went over, too, with a hand firmly fisted in the boy’s coat, but you’d never know it from all the screaming. And the cursing—of the magical variety—the first of which his new partner tried while still mid-air. The second followed as they hit the side of the cliff and went rappelling down the sheer face, being smashed into the rock every few yards by gale force winds. And a third bounced off John’s thankfully bespelled coat once they landed on a narrow ledge a hundred feet down.
At which point John slammed the crazy man-child into the rocky wall and wrapped a bit of shield around the lower part of his face, gagging him.
The curses cut off abruptly. John sighed and leaned back against the cliff in relief. There; that was better.
At least it was until he had to dodge the fist that plowed into the rocks beside him. One which hadn’t been warded, judging by the pained faces his companion was making. And the renewed curses he was mouthing, all of which were silent—and thereby useless, because the boy had yet to learn the fine art of silent spell casting.
John rolled his eyes and sent a tendril of magic into the cave.
He didn’t use the demon variety, of course, which would have been picked up immediately. He didn’t use the human, either. Most of the time, being a mongrel cross between three different creatures—human, demon and fey—was a headache, leaving him more of an outcast than the boy would ever be. But occasionally, it had its uses.
Like allowing him to employ a type of magic the demon was unlikely to know, or even to recognize. John closed his eyes and felt the fey spell slither through sea and rock and air. From the brilliant moonlight ruffling the surface of the dark ocean, to the shallow pools littering deeply shaded caves, lit only by the reflection of a reflection, and then into a darkness so vast and so deep it felt like it went on forever.
Where are you? John thought, concentrating. I know you’re there. I can feel you.