The Box Omnibus #1 (The Box, The Journal, The Sword) (32 page)

Al does no
t 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 touch
es. 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 le
t 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 I once again feel like he's looking directly at me. I see in him the same caring gaze he’d had before taking Stewart's magic.

"You can't leave." I gesture toward the bodies I'm trying very hard no
t to look at or think about. If I do... No. Worry about it later. "Who are these guys? What was this about? Why are you here?"

Confusion fills his eyes as though he's not sure where he is let alone how to answer my questions. And then something shifts inside him and his eyes go
as dark as his magic and a creepy smile takes over his entire face.

"Sweet, innocent Lou," he says in a twisted version of his regular voice. "All alone with only the corpses to hear you scream."

I brace myself for an attack that doesn't come.

"I'm not screaming," I say when it's obvious he's not going to do anything.

"Not yet." He giggles and his head lolls as far back on his neck as it will go and his hands reach up, palms to the sky. It's like he's enjoying the feel of rain, but none is falling. "But you will."

A sensible
part of me wants to dive for my dropped sword, but I don't move. I don't gather any magic to protect myself. I'm afraid if I do he'll sense it and be provoked to attack. Plus, there's something obviously wrong with him, and I'm sure it has to do with the disgusting magic within him.

I take a timid
step forward and his head snaps up to stare at me. 

"Al?" I force myself to
move toward him again, though I'm sure getting closer is not a good idea. "Are you all right?"

A
nger flashes behind his eyes and he appears thoroughly disgusted as he spits out the words, "The Sword."

I glance down at my dropped weapon and realize to him it probably looks like I’m moving toward it. "It's fine, see?" I
move to the side, away from it and show him my hands to prove I don't have any magic gathered there either. "I'm not going to attack you. You don't have to worry about my sword."

When he laughs, it's not the friendly sound I remember. This laugh is harsh and mocking.

"The Sword," he says again. "They came for you. I stopped them."

It takes me a minute to figure out what, or rather who, he's talking about. "You mean these wizards?" Don't look at them. Whatever you do, Lou, don't look at the bodies. "They were coming after me? Why? How did they find me?"

He doesn't answer. His attention is locked on the doorway I’d burst through as though he's trying to see all of the way down the stairs to someone at the bottom. The grip on his sword grows tighter and for a second I'm sure he's going to rush forward at whatever he thinks he sees. I want to turn around to check and make sure there isn’t someone coming, but I’d be giving him the perfect opportunity to kill me, too. Or worse, take my magic.

After a few seconds I can hear high heels on the steps leading to the roof. Al's grip relaxes just before the door swings open.

"...supposed to warn me," Sin finishes as she barges onto the open roof.

"I'm s
orry, I—Oh." The second voice stops talking the moment she's clear of the door.

I can't help myself. I need to see who’s with my sister. I twist my head to get a look at Sin
, who looks annoyed, and another girl, who tries to smooth down her curly red hair as she gawks at me.

When I turn back to get Al in my sight again, I'm relieved to see he hasn't moved. However, the
feeling doesn't last as I notice the unnerving smile he's giving me.

No one says anything
for a moment while I try to think of how I can explain any of this to Sin. She's not going to like that I've been lying to her about Al all this time. I probably should have told her he’d taken Stewart’s magic and become a full wizard long ago, but I never brought myself to do it. Saying it out loud would have made it more real somehow.

"What the hell, Al?" Sin says. "Aren't you supposed to be somewhere else? As in, away from my sister? I'm pretty sure that was the deal."

Sin picks her way across the bodies as though they're nothing more than a bit of trash. Seeing my sister stroll around corpses and puddles of blood as though it’s nothing new for her shatters the numbness holding me together. My stomach starts to rebel and I no longer have complete control over my muscles. I start to shake.

"It's pretty obvious why he's here." The redhead has as little problem navigating the
dead people as Sin. She may be less disturbed by them, if possible. She makes it to Al's side and puts a hand on his arm. He doesn't react as he continues to stare at me. "It's not his fault you brought your sister to a place The Sword was staking out."

I can’t stand the look
Al’s giving me. It makes my skin crawl the same way Stewart’s gaze had. I have to look away. Unfortunately, the first place my eyes go is down to the closest of Al’s victims.

Vomit spews from my mouth with no warning. I barely have time to turn my back on the others so they don’t have to witness the entire affair.

“Seriously?” Sin says. “You just had to leave your DNA here, didn’t you? You couldn’t hold it in until you were downstairs. A person throwing up in a bar is not a big deal. Being right next to a bunch of bodies on the other hand is a little suspicious.”

“Screw you.” Sadly, since I’m using so much effort to stop myself from repeating the offense, my voice isn’t nearly as cutting as I’d like. “And why aren’t you getting sick too? It’s not like you see corpses all
the time either. Unless you do. Who knows what you get up to now you’re living alone? Maybe this is a nightly occurrence for you.”

“
Or I’m just not a pussy,” she says.

“We should
leave,” the red haired girl says. “Don’t you think, Aldric?”

There’s something familiar about her voice. Especially the way she says Al’s name.

I wipe my face off with my hand and look over at her. I’m filled with a shocking dose of hatred I have no right to feel when I take in her slim but sturdy figure and big green eyes. The look she gives Al is one of complete adoration and love. It makes me want to turn around and vomit again.

There’s only one person I know who loves Al that much.

“Rose?” Her glance at me when I say her name confirms my suspicion. Of course it’s her. And I thought this day couldn’t get any worse. “What are you doing here?”

She stands a bit taller, with her back straight and her chest out. Yep. She’s b
ustier than me. I officially hate her.

“I’m here to help
Aldric,” she says. “Something much easier done when you aren’t around tempting him with your magic.”

“You are not turning this on me.
You’re in my world. This time you’re the one intruding.”

Even in the low lights from the
neighboring buildings, I can tell her face has gone bright red. Obviously she hasn’t forgotten about our conversation at Al’s house. The one where she told me to leave and never come back.

“Uh, Lou?” Sin shakes my arm. “I think she might be right about
tempting Al.”

I
turn, ready to throw some not so kind words at her as well. After all, she knew Al and Rose were in our world. Worse, she has been in contact with them. And she never once thought it would be a good idea to tell me.

But the second I see what she’s looking at, I freeze. Al’s expression has changed. There’s nothing good or kind in the dark eyes star
ing at me across the roof. Magic is gathering around him at an alarming rate, and I barely have time to react.

I throw up a hand and a
n invisible shield surrounds me. The second it’s up, his magic hits. Paralyzing spell. I can feel it trying to eat through my shield like some sort of magical acid. I can’t keep the protection up. It’s too painful. I drop the shield and shake my hand to try to rid myself of the sharp pain as the muscles in my hand spasm.

“
Aldric, no.” Rose reaches up to try to force him to look at her. She doesn’t see he’s still oozing with the paralyzing spell, and I’m not quick enough to help her. She drops the second her skin touches his.

For half a second, his eyes are exactly the same as I remember. Soft, kind and full of life. He looks horrified at what he’s done. However, as he reaches down to touch her, I can feel the darkness inside him swell. He might not want to, but I’m sure if he touches her, he’ll only make things worse. I cocoon her in a thick blanket of my magic.

Try burning through that.

He doesn’t. The second
my magic surrounds her, he stops. His hand lingers mid reach for a moment before he takes a long breath and tilts his head in my direction.

“Look after her,
” he says.

And he leaps off the roof.

I run over and drop to my knees beside Rose while Sin rushes past me to look over the edge of the roof.

Her voice is breathy as she says, “He’s not there.”

Of course he’s not. He used his magic to slow his fall, and then speed up his run the second he hit the ground. It used up only a tiny portion of the magic consuming him, but I’d felt it as strongly as if I’d been the one using the magic. What interests me much more than how he got away is why. There was no reason for him to run. I certainly wasn’t about to out power him. Not with the fresh magic pumping through him from the wizards he just killed.

Once again, he chose not to go after me when
he could have easily overpowered me and sucked up every last drop of my magic.

“
He’s long gone.”

I don’t have the energy to tell her anything more.
After all, I need to put all of my attention into the spell locking up Rose’s body, making it impossible for her to move or breathe.

The spell is a wild, twisting combination of threads of magic, winding around every inch of her in a head
pounding way. I try to find the pattern, and in it a weak spot, but the magic is constantly shifting and swaying.

I can’t stand to look any longer.
My tender stomach is going to rebel again.

I
shut my eyes and press my hand to her stomach. The magic wriggles under my grasp and tries to work its way into my skin to taint the magic within me. I push back, forcing my magic to thread itself into his spell and become a part of it. Once I’ve infiltrated it, I’m able to force the oozing mess into a proper shape, burning away any dark magic that won’t properly mesh with my power. Once I’m in control of the spell, it’s easy to find a small section a little bit weaker than the rest.

Nothing. There is no weakness. His magic is so tightly woven together I can’t
see a single weak point within the mass.

Which leaves only one choice.

I use the light of my magic like the sun and burn away the shadows of his power. A tiny bit at first, then larger chunks fizzle until finally there is nothing left to the spell.

Rose sputters as she sucks in too much air.

I rock back on my heels and force myself to breathe normally as well. I must have been holding my breath right along with her and not noticed because of how stressful the situation was.

“
Well,” Sin says after Rose finishes a short coughing fit. “That was fun. But I think it’s time to go home.”

“
Aldric.” Rose crawls to the side of the building and looks in every direction available. “Don’t… Not again.”

“He’s gone,” Sin says. “No use getting all worked up about it.
It’s not like this is the first time he’s done this, after all.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Rose says. “I need to be with him. I need to keep him from doing anything stupid.”

“He’ll be fine.” Sin pats Rose on the head like a kid. “He always is. But I guess you’ll have to stay at my place tonight. You definitely can’t be caught hanging around here.”

I allow my eyes to wander over the
corpses, expecting my stomach to turn again, but apparently there’s nothing left inside me to come up.

A glint of metal reminds me of my dropped sword and I make my way over to grab it and slide it into my magic pocket. It’s wrong how emotionless I feel toward the dead people scattered around me. Wizards or not, they are still human. By not feeling anything, I’m becoming as
bad or worse than them.

“Should we call the cops?” I say. “Someone
needs to do something about the bodies.”

“Don’t be an idiot.” Sin gives me a look to say she doubts I know how to be
anything else. “We don’t want to get any more attached to this than we already are. In fact, walking out the front door at this point is more than we should do. Think you can magic us to the ground like Al?”

The spell he used
is unfamiliar and full of twists just like the one he used on Rose. But I understand the concept. Don’t try to lift us, bring the ground closer. Not physically, that’s impossible, but if I can eliminate the space between us and the ground, I can safely move us down. It’s almost the complete opposite of the pocket of air where I keep my sword. 

I reach down and wrap my magic around a bubble of space large enough for the three of us, and then pull. The space stretches
up, though it seems to take three times as long as Al managed.

Practice.
All there is to it. His magic isn’t any stronger than mine, he just better understands how it works. Or at least I feel a bit more comfortable if I tell myself as much.

I stretch the space only as far as I
absolutely have to. The effort of this and my previous uses of magic are starting to wear on me. Like using a muscle I’m not used to working with during an exhaustive workout. There’s about a two foot gap between the edge of the roof and the stretched space I’ve created, but I think even in Rose’s state, we should all be able to make it across, as long as we jump together.

“Wrap your arms around mine
.” Neither of them appears particularly keen to follow my instructions. “This was your idea,” I remind Sin.

She roughly locks her arm around mine. “Fine. But if you’re wrong about this, I’m using you to break my fall.”

Rose is much more delicate when she wraps her fingers around my arm, and for a second I worry she’ll lose her hold the second we jump. I shouldn’t have been concerned. Her grip turns to steel the second she’s sure of her fingers’ locations, and if anything’s going to come loose, it’s my arm as she rips it from my body. I don’t know how she developed such a strong grip, but I’m envious. She’s obviously much stronger than I assumed.

We leap as one, easily falling into my stretched bubble of space. The second we touch it, I let the
stretched air snap back into its original shape, bringing us firmly and safely to the ground.

Rose breaks away from me the second we’re
down and wraps her arms around herself like she’s trying to warm up from a nonexistent cool breeze. Sin on the other hand doesn’t miss a beat. She starts walking the moment her feet hit the ground, leading us out of the back alley where we landed and toward the lights of the main street.

“Come on,” she says. “The car’s this way.”

When she’s a couple of feet in front of us, I grab Rose’s arm and force her to stay behind with me.

“Out with it,” I say. “
What’s wrong with him?”

She follows Sin with her eyes, but to her credit she doesn’t call for help. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come on.” I rub my face a little too hard. Only after do I remember the layers of makeup I’m ruining. I can only hope my mascara hasn’t given me raccoon eyes. “Al. There’s something more going on with him than his just being a full wizard. The magic is affecting his mind, isn’t it?”

For a second I think she’s going to refuse to answer as she looks everywhere but at me. And then she sighs. “Sometimes he’s almost completely normal. He looks at me and I know he’s still in there. But other times…”

I nod my understanding. After all, I’d seen the other times for myself.

“Has he taken from any sorceress?” I don’t want to know. But I have to ask.

“No,” she says with more confidence than I’d been expecting. “Of course not. Only other wizards. And even then, it’s not like he’s seeking them for the purpose of taking their magic. Mostly. He’s trying to find Loraine, and they keep getting in his way.”

“Loraine?” For a second I’m back in Al’s house, looking through his eyes at
the pretty blonde lying in a coma in front of him. “His sister? She’s missing?”

Sin slams her hand against an old metal garbage can
, and we both jump at the resulting rumble. “Do neither of you understand the idea of getting the hell out of here? This is a crime scene. Getting caught hanging around it would be bad. Now let’s move.”

No one says a word as we make our way to the car. As Sin pushes her
key into the door’s lock, sirens blare and the three of us stare wide eyed into the lights of a police car.

It drives
by us in a second, but it’s enough time for me to learn what it must feel like to have a heart attack. When the sound of sirens doesn’t fade into the distance, I know they’ve stopped at the bar.

Sin’s eyes lock with mine and for a minute I’m sure we’re actually on the same page. We need to get out of here.
Now.

“Rose up front,” Sin says when I jog to the passenger side door.

Rose slips past me with an apologetic shrug. I stand outside for a minute, confused at what’s going on. But I can’t stand around forever. The police are way too close for comfort. I slide in back with a crushed box of tissues and enough chimera hair to make a second beast.

Before the car starts forward, Rose’s window is already all of the way down, which would be nice if there was any sort of a breeze.

“Wouldn’t the air conditioning be better?” I ask.

“Trust me.” Sin pulls onto the mostly empty road. “
No, it wouldn’t. Just remember, any mess in the car and you will be the one cleaning it up.”

For once, I don’t think it’s me she’s lecturing.