Magic Bleeds

WILLIAM SIPPED SOME BEER FROM THE BOTTLE OF Modelo Especial and gave the Green Arrow his hard stare. The Green Arrow, being a chunk of painted plastic, didn’t rise to the challenge. The action figure remained impassive, exactly where he’d put it, leaning against the porch post of William’s house. Technically it was a shack rather than a house, William reflected, but it was a roof over his head and he wasn’t one to complain.

From that vantage point, the Green Arrow had an excellent view of William’s action figure army laid out on the porch, and if he were inclined to offer any opinions, he would’ve been in a great position to do so. William shrugged. Part of him realized that talking to an action figure was bordering on insane, but he had nobody else to converse with at the moment and he needed to talk this out. The whole situation was crazy.

“The boys sent a letter,” William said.

The Green Arrow said nothing.

William looked past him to where the Wood rustled just beyond his lawn. Two miles down the road, the Wood would become simply woods, regular Georgia pine and oak. But here, in the Edge, the trees grew vast, fed by magic, and the forest was old. The day had rolled into a lazy, long spring evening, and small nameless critters, found only in the Edge, chased each other through the limbs of the ancient trees before the darkness coaxed predators from their lairs.

The Edge was an odd place, stuck between two worlds. On one side lay the Broken, with no magic but plenty of technology to compensate. And rules. And laws. And paperwork. The damn place ran on paperwork. The Broken was where he made his money nowadays, working construction.

On the other side lay the Weird, a mirror to the Broken, where magic ruled and old blueblood families held power. He was born in that world. In the Weird, he’d been an outcast, a soldier, a convict, and even a noble for a few brief weeks, but the Weird kept kicking him in the teeth the entire time until he finally turned his back on it and left.

The Edge belonged to neither world. A perfect place for the man who fit in nowhere. That was how he first met the boys, George and Jack. They lived in the Edge, with their sister, Rose. Rose was sweet and pretty and he’d liked her. He’d liked what they had, she and the kids, a warm little family. When he watched them together, a part of him hurt deep inside. He now realized why: he’d known even then that a family like that was forever out of his reach.

Still, he’d tried with Rose. Might have had a chance, too, but then Declan showed up. Declan, a blueblood and a soldier, with his flawless manners and handsome face. “We used to be friends, before we screwed it up,” William told the Green Arrow. “I did beat the shit out of him before he left.”

The joke was on him, because Declan left with Rose and took the boys with him. William let them go. Jack required a lot of careful care and Declan would raise him well. And Rose needed someone like Declan. Someone who had his shit together. She had enough trouble with the boys as it was. She sure as hell didn’t need another charity project and he didn’t want to be one.

It had been almost two years since they’d left. William lived in the Edge, where the trickle of magic kept the wild within him alive. He worked his job in the Broken, watched TV on weekends, drank lots of beer, collected action figures, and generally pretended that the previous twenty-six years of his life did not exist. The Edgers, the few families who lived between the worlds like he did, kept to themselves and left him alone.

Most people from either the Broken or the Weird had no idea the other dimension existed, but occasionally traders passed through the Edge, traveling between worlds. Three months ago, Nick, one of the traveling traders, mentioned he was heading into the Weird, to the Southern Provinces. William put together a small box of toys on a whim and paid the man to deliver it. He didn’t expect an answer. He didn’t expect anything at all. The boys had Declan. They would have no interest in him.

Nick came by last night. The boys had written back.

William picked up the letter and looked at it. It was short. George’s writing was perfect, with letters neatly placed. Jack’s looked like a chicken had scratched it in the dirt. They said thank you for the action figures. George liked the Weird. He was given plenty of corpses to practice necromancy on and he was taking rapier lessons. Jack complained that there were too many rules and that they weren’t letting him hunt enough.

“That’s a mistake,” William told Green Arrow. “They need to let him vent. Half of their problems would be solved if they let him have a violent outlet.” He raised the letter. “Apparently he decided to prove to them that he was good enough. The kid went and killed himself a deer and left the bloody thing on the dining room table, because he’s a cat and he thinks they’re lousy hunters. According to him, it didn’t go over well. He’s trying to feed them and they don’t get it.”

What Jack needed was some direction to channel all that energy. But William wasn’t about to travel to the Weird and show up on Declan’s doorstep. Hi, remember me? We were best friends once, and then I was condemned to death and your uncle adopted me, so I would kill you? You stole Rose from me? Yeah, right. All he could do was write back and send more action figures.

William pulled the box to him. He’d put in Deathstroke for George—the figure looked a bit like a pirate and George liked pirates, because his grandfather had been one. He also stuck King Grayskull in for Declan. Not that Declan played with action figures—he’d had his childhood, while William spent his in Hawk’s Academy, which was little more than a prison. Still, William liked to thumb his nose at him, and King Grayskull with his long blond hair looked a lot like Declan.

“So the real question here is, do we send the purple Wildcat to Jack or the black one?”

The Green Arrow expressed no opinion.

A musky scent drifted down to William. He turned around. Two small glowing eyes stared at him from under the bush on the edge of his lawn.

The raccoon bared his small sharp teeth.

“I’ve warned you, stay out of my trash or I will eat you.”

The little beast opened his mouth and hissed like a pissed-off cat.

William shrugged off his T-shirt. His jeans and underwear followed. “We’re going to settle this.”

The raccoon hissed again, puffing out his fur, trying to look bigger. His eyes glowed like two small coals.

William reached deep inside himself and let the wild off the chain. Pain rocked him, jerking him to and fro, the way a dog shook a rat. His bones softened and bent, his ligaments snapped, his flesh flowed like molten wax. Dense black fur sheathed him. The agony ended and William rolled to his feet.

For a second, William saw his reflection in the little beast’s eyes—a hulking dark shape on all fours—and then the interloper whirled about and fled.

William howled, singing a long sad song about the hunt and the thrill of the chase, and the promise of hot blood pulsing between his teeth. The small critters hid high up in the branches, recognizing a predator in their midst.

The last echoes of the song scurried into the Wood. William bit the air with sharp white fangs and gave chase.

WILLIAM TROTTED THROUGH THE WOOD. THE raccoon had turned out to be female and in possession of six kits. How the hell he missed the female scent, he would never know. Getting rusty in the Edge. His senses weren’t quite as sharp here.

He had to let them be. You didn’t hunt a female with a litter—that was how species went extinct. He’d caught a nice juicy rabbit instead. William licked his lips. Mmm, good. He would just have to figure out how to weigh down the lid on the trash can, so she couldn’t get into his garbage again. Maybe one of his dumbbells would do the job . . .

He caught a glimpse of his house through the trees. A scent floated to him: spicy, reminiscent of cinnamon mixed with a dash of cumin and ginger.

His hackles rose. William went to ground.

This scent didn’t belong in this world outside of a bakery. It was the scent of a human from beyond the Edge’s boundary, with shreds of the Weird’s magic still clinging to them.

He lay in the gloom between the roots and listened. Insects chirping. Squirrels in the tree to the left settling down for the night. A woodpecker, hammering in the distance to get the last grub of the day.

Nothing but ordinary Wood noises.

From his hiding spot, he could see the entire porch. Nothing stirred.

The rays of the setting sun slid across the boards. A tiny star winked at him.

William edged forward, a dark soft-pawed ghost in the evening twilight. One yard. Two. Three.

The star winked again. A rectangular wooden box sat on the porch steps, secured with a simple metal latch. The latch shone with reflected sunlight. Someone had left him a present.

William circled the house twice, straining to sample the scents, listening to small noises. He found the intruder’s trail leading into the woods. Whoever delivered the box had come and gone.

He approached the house and looked at the box. Eighteen inches long, a foot wide, three inches tall. Simple unmarked wood. Looked like pine. Smelled like it, too. Nothing ticked inside.

His action figures were as he’d left them. His letter, pinned down by the heavy Hulk, remained undisturbed. The spicy scent didn’t reach it—it was untouched.

William pulled the door open with his paw and slipped inside. He would need fingers for this.

The pain screamed through him, shooting through the marrow in his bones. He growled low, shook, convulsing, and shed his fur. Twenty seconds of agony and William crouched on human legs in the living room. Ten more seconds and he stepped out on the porch, fully dressed and armed with a long knife. Just because it didn’t tick didn’t mean it wouldn’t blow up when he opened it. He’d seen bombs that were the size of a drink coaster. They made no noise, gave off no scent, and took your leg off if you stepped on them.

He used the knife to pry the latch open and flip the lid off the box. A stack of paper. Hmm.

William plucked the first sheet off the top of the stack, flipped it over, and froze.

A small mangled body lay in the green grass. The boy was barely ten years old, his skin stark white against the smudges of crimson that spread from a gaping wound in his stomach. Someone had disemboweled him with a single vicious thrust and the kid had bled out. So much blood. It was everywhere, on his skinny stomach, on his hands, on the yellow dandelions around him . . . Bright, shockingly red, so vivid, it didn’t seem real. The boy’s narrow face stared at the sky with milky dead eyes, his mouth opened in a horrified O, short reddish hair sticking up . . .

It’s Jack. The thought punched William in the stomach. His heart hammered. He peered closely at the face. No, not Jack. A cat like Jack—slit pupils—but Jack had brown hair. The boy was the right age, the right build, but he was not Jack.

William exhaled slowly, trying to get a handle on his rage. He knew this. He’d seen this boy’s corpse before, but not in a picture. He’d seen the body in the flesh, smelled the blood and the raw, unforgettable stench of the gut wound. His memory conjured it for him now, and he almost choked on the bitter phantom patina coating his tongue.

The next picture showed a little girl, tiny, ten at most. Her hair was a mess of blood and brains—her skull had been crushed.

More pictures came, eight in all. Eight murdered children lay on his porch. Eight changeling children, taken out of the prison known as Hawk’s Academy for an outdoor exercise. Fifteen years ago, he was just like them, locked in the sterile rooms of Hawk’s, the place where the country of Adrianglia exiled its changelings to turn them into “productive members of society.” The studies were taxing, the exercise exhausting, the rules rigid, and freedom was in short supply. Only outdoors, the children truly lived. These eight must’ve been giddy to be let out into the sunshine and grass.

They had been led to the border between Adrianglia and the Dukedom of Louisiana, its chief rival. The border was always hot, with Louisianans and Adrianglians crossing back and forth. The instructors allowed the kids to track a group of border jumpers from Louisiana as a routine exercise. He had done it before a few times, when he was small.

William stared at the pictures. It should have been an easy track-and-find. But this time, the Louisianans turned out to be no ordinary border jumpers. They were agents of Louisiana’s Hand: spies, twisted by magic and powerful enough to take out a squad of trained soldiers. They led the children on a merry chase, toying with them for a few miles, and then they let themselves be caught.

When the kids failed to report in, a unit of Legionnaires was dispatched to find them. William was the tracker for that squad. He was the one who found the children dead in the meadow. It was a massacre, brutal and cold. The kids hadn’t gone quickly. They’d hurt before they died.

The last piece of paper waited in the box. William picked it up. He knew what it would say. The words were burned into his memory.

He read it all the same.

Dumb animals offer little sport. Louisiana kills changelings at birth—it’s far more efficient than wasting time and resources to try to turn them into people. I recommend you look into this practice, because next time I’ll expect proper compensation for getting rid of your little freaks.

Mindless hot fury flooded William, sweeping away all reason and restraint. He raised his head to the sky and snarled, giving voice to his rage before it tore him apart.

For years he’d tracked Spider as much as the Legion would permit him. He’d found him twice. The first time he’d ripped apart Spider’s stomach—and Spider broke William’s legs. The second time, William had shattered the Louisianan’s ribs, while Spider nearly drowned him. Both times, the Hand’s spy had slipped through his fingers.

Nobody cared for the changelings. They grew up exiled from society, raised to obey and kill on command for the good of Adrianglia. They were fodder, but to him they were children, just like he once had been a child. Just like Jack.

He had to find Spider. He had to kill him this time. The child murderer had to be punished.

A man stepped out of the Wood. William leapt off the porch. In a breath he pinned the man to the trunk of the nearest tree and snarled, his teeth clicking a hair from the man’s carotid.

The man made no move to resist. “Do you want to kill me or Spider?”

“The name is Erwin.” The man nodded at his raised hands.

A large ring clamped his middle finger—a plain silver band with a small polished mirror in it. The sign of the Adrianglian Secret Service, the Hand’s greatest enemy.

“The Mirror would like a word, Lord Sandine,” the man said softly. “Would you be kind enough to favor us with an audience?”

CERISE LEANED OVER THE TEA-COLORED WATERS of Horseshoe Pond. Around her, massive cypresses stood like ancient soldiers at attention, the knobby knees of their roots straddling the water. The Mire was never silent, but nothing out of the ordinary interrupted the familiar chorus of small noises: a toad belching somewhere to the left, the faint scuttling of Edge squirrels in the canopy above her, the persistent warbling of the bluebill . . .

She rolled up her jeans and crouched, calling in a practiced singsong, “Where is Nellie? Where is that good girl? Nellie is the best rolpie ever. Here, Nellie, Nellie, Nellie.”

The surface of the pond lay completely placid. Not a splash.

The rolpie was in there. Cerise was absolutely sure of it. She’d tracked the stubborn animal since three past midnight when Arthur heard Nellie break out of the rolpie enclosure. Cerise had been going from stream to stream for the last four hours. The trail—a long smudge in the mud, flanked by swipes from the paws—ended five feet to the left of her.

“Here, Nellie! Here, girl. Who is a good girl? Nellie is. Oh, Nellie is so pretty. Oh, Nellie is so fat. She is the fattest cutest stupidest rolpie ever. Yes, she is.”

Cerise looked up. Far above, a small chunk of blue sky winked at her through the braid of cypress branches and Mire vines. “Why do you do this to me?”

The sky refused to answer. It usually did, but that didn’t stop her from talking to it.

A chirp echoed overhead and a white globe of bird poop plummeted from the branches. Cerise dodged and growled at the sky. “Not cool. Not cool at all.”

It was time for emergency measures. Cerise leaned her sword against a cypress knee, anchoring the scabbard in the muck, shifted her weight, pulling the backpack off her shoulders, and dug in the bag. She fished out a length of rope with a headcollar, designed to fit on the rolpie’s muzzle and loop behind her ears, and arranged it on the mud for easy access. The can opener was followed by a small can.

She held the can out and knocked on it with the can opener. The sound of metal on metal rolled above the pound. Nothing.

“Oh, what do I have? I have tuna!”

A small ripple wrinkled the surface about thirty feet out. Gotcha.

“Mmmm, yummy, yummy tuna. I’ll eat it all by myself.” She arranged the can opener on the can and squeezed, breaking the seal.

A brindled head popped out of the water. The rolpie sampled the air with a black nose framed with long dark whiskers. Large black eyes fixed on the can with maniacal glee.

Cerise squeezed the top of the can, letting some of the fish juice drip into the pond.

The rolpie sped through the water and launched herself out onto the shore. From the bottom up to the neck, she resembled a lean seal armed with a long tail and four wide half-legs framed with flat flippers. At the shoulders, the seal body stretched into a graceful long neck, tipped with an otter head. When she was a little girl, Grandpa once told her that rolpies were reptiles and their fur was actually modified feathers, but looking at one, you wouldn’t think it.

Cerise shook the can. “Head.”

Nellie licked her black lips and tried her best to look adorable.

The rolpie lowered her head. Cerise slipped the collar over her wet muzzle and tightened it. “You’ll pay for this, you know.”

The black nose nudged her shoulder. Cerise plucked a chunk of tuna from the can and tossed it at the rolpie. Razor-sharp teeth rent the air, snapping up the treat. Cerise swiped her sword off the ground and tugged on the leash. The rolpie lumbered next to her, wiggling and pushing herself across the swamp mud.

“What the hell was that? Breaking out in the middle of the night and taking off for a stroll, are we? Did you get tired of pulling the boats and decided to take your chances with Mire crocs?”

The rolpie squirmed along, watching the can of tuna like it was some holy relic.

“They can bite bone sharks in half. They’ll look at you and see a plump little snack. Brunch, that’s what you’d be.”

Nellie licked her lips.

“Do you think tuna grows in the mud?” Cerise plucked another chunk of fish out of the can and tossed it at Nellie. “In case you didn’t know, we live in the Edge, between two worlds. We have to get our tuna from the Broken. The Broken has no magic. But you know what the Broken does have? Cops. Lots and lots of cops. And alarm systems. Do you have any idea how hard it is to steal tuna from the Broken, Nellie?”

Nellie emitted a small squeal of despair.

“I don’t feel sorry for you. It takes four days to get to the boundary that separates the Edge from the Broken, because it’s three miles off-shore, and crossing the boundary hurts like hell. And we can’t afford to get arrested in the Broken. They don’t know the Edge or the Weird exist. Most of them don’t have enough magic to see the damn boundary, let alone cross it. Can you imagine how hard it is to explain why you have no ID to a Broken cop? If you think that you’ll get tuna treats every time you decide to take a stroll in the moonlight, you have another think coming, missy. Besides, I work hard and I have better things to do than drag my butt out of my very comfortable bed and chase you all around the damn Mire.”

The vegetation parted, revealing the dark water of Priest’s Tongue stream. A green Mire viper lay in the mud. It hissed as they approached. Cerise hooked the snake with her sword and tossed it aside.

“Come on.” She threw another bite of tuna to the rolpie and led her into the stream. Cerise wrapped the leash loop tighter around her wrist and slid her arms around Nellie’s narrow neck. “You get the rest when we get home. And no dives into the peat at the bottom either.” Cerise clicked her tongue and the rolpie took off down the stream.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER CERISE SHUT THE GATE on the rolpie enclosure. Someone, probably the younger boys, had made a reasonable attempt to repair the chain-link fence, but it wouldn’t hold if Nellie decided to ram it. In the twisted creeks and rivers of the swamp, rolpies were vital. In some places, the water was completely stagnant and the swamp vegetation blocked the wind. The rolpies pulled the light swamp boats all over the Mire to help save gasoline.

As long as a human was present, Nellie was an excellent rolpie: obedient, sweet, powerful. The moment you took the person out of the equation, the silly beast freaked out and tried to take off.

Maybe she had separation anxiety, Cerise reflected, starting up the hill toward the Rathole. Segregating Nellie in a smaller enclosure would only lead to disaster. Knowing her, she would bray night and day, because she was alone. And reinforcing the fence was too much labor just to secure a single rolpie.

Cerise chugged up the hill to the Mar family house. Water dripped from her clothes and squished between her toes inside her boots. She wanted a hot shower and a nice meal, preferably with some meat in it. Things being what they were, she’d settle for fish or bacon. She’d have to oil her sword, too, but that was part of living in the swamp. Water and steel didn’t mix very well.

The Rathole sat on top of a low hill, a sprawling two-story monster of a house. Fifty yards of cleared ground separated the house from the nearest vegetation. The kill zone. Fifty yards was a lot of ground for enemies to cover, when they had rifles and crossbones trained on them.

The ground floor had no entrance or windows. The only way in lay up the stairway to the second-floor verandah. As she approached the stairs, a small shape slipped from behind the verandah’s colonnades and sat on the stairs. Sophie. Lark, Cerise corrected herself. She wanted to be called Lark now.

Her sister gave her a weary look from under dark tousled hair. Her skinny legs stuck out of her capris like matchsticks. Mud smudged her calves. Scratches and bruises covered her arms. She hid her hands, but Cerise was willing to bet that her nails were dirty or bitten off, probably both. Lark used to be a bit of a neat freak, as much as an eleven-year-old girl brought up in the swamp could be. All gone now.

Worry pinched at Cerise. She kept her face calm. Show nothing. Don’t make Lark self-conscious.

She came up the stairs, sat next to Lark, and pulled off her left boot, emptying the water out.

“Adrian and Derril are riding the Doom Buggy through the Snake Tracks,” Lark murmured.

The dune buggy was a hell mobile made of pure fun. In fact, Cerise had snuck away with it before and had so much fun, she’d flipped it over. But touching the dune buggy without adult supervision was strictly forbidden. Stealing it and wasting expensive gasoline were punishable by three weeks of extra chores.

Of course, both fifteen-year-old Adrian and his fourteen-year-old sidekick, Derril, knew this and could handle the consequences. The most pressing issue was that Lark had just tattled. Lark never tattled.

Cerise forced herself to calmly pull the other boot off. The very core of her sister’s personality was changing and she could only watch, helpless.

“The boys didn’t take you with them?”

The answer was so quiet, she barely heard it. “No.”

Six months ago, they would have. Both of them knew it. The urge to reach out and hug Lark’s bony shoulders gripped Cerise, but she kept still. She’d tried that before. Her sister would stiffen, slide away, and take off into the woods.

At least Lark was talking to her. That was a rare thing. Normally, Mom was the only person who could get through to her and even she had a hard time drawing Lark out lately. The kid was slipping away into her own world and nobody knew how to pull her out.

“Did you tell Mom?” Cerise asked.

“Mom isn’t here.”

“They left. Together.”

Cerise frowned. The family had been feuding with another clan for the last eighty years. Sometimes the hostility between them burned bright and sometimes, like right now, it smoldered, but the feud could burst into warfare at any moment. The last time the feud had flared, she lost two uncles, an aunt, and a cousin. The standing rule was: you go out, you let someone know where you’re going and when you’re planning on coming back. Even Father, who was the head of the family, never strayed from this rule. “When and why did they leave?”

“At sunrise, and they left because Cobbler got his butt bit.”

Cobbler, an old wino, bummed about the swamp doing odd jobs in exchange for moonshine. Cerise never cared for the man. He was mean to kids when he thought their parents weren’t looking and he’d stab anyone in the back just out of spite. “Go on . . .”

“He came over and told Dad wild dogs got into Grandpa’s house. They chased him and one bit him on the butt. His pants had holes.”

The Sene Manor had been boarded up for years, ever since their grandparents had died there of red fever twelve years ago. Cerise remembered it as a sunny house, painted bright yellow, a spot of color in the swamp. It was an abandoned wreck now. Nobody went near it. Cobbler had no business going there either. Probably was looking for something to steal.

“What happened next?”

Lark shrugged. “Cobbler kept talking until Dad gave him some wine and then he went away. And then Dad said he had to go and take care of Grandpa’s house, because it was still our land. Mom said she would go with him. They rode out.”

Getting to Sene Manor by truck was impossible. They would’ve gone on horseback.

“And you haven’t seen them since?”

Sene Manor was half an hour away by horse. They should’ve been back by now.

“Do you think Mom and Dad are dead?” Lark asked in a flat voice.

Oh, Gods. “No. Dad’s death with a sword and Mom can shoot a Mire croc in the eye from a hundred feet. Something must’ve held them up.”

A muted roar rolled through the trees—the dune buggy’s engine getting a workout. Dimwits. Didn’t even have the patience to turn the engine off and roll the buggy back up to the house. Cerise rose.

“Let me deal with this, and if Mom and Dad aren’t back by the end of the hour, I’ll go and check it out.”

An old dune buggy burst out from between the pines, splashing through the mud on its way to the house. Cerise raised her hand. Two mud-splattered faces stared at her from the front seat with abject horror.

Cerise drew in a deep breath and barked. “Cramp!”

Magic pulsed from her hand. The curse clutched at the two boys, twisting the muscles in their arms. Adrian doubled over, the wheel spun left, the dune buggy careened, and the whole thing toppled onto its side in a huge splash, sliding through the sludge. The hell mobile turned, vomiting the two daredevils into the mud, spun for the last time, and stopped.

“Feel free to go over there and kick them while they’re down. When you’re done, tell them to clean everything up and head straight to the stables. Aunt Karen will be overjoyed to have two slaves for the next three weeks.”

Cerise took her boots and headed into the house. She’d have to take at least two people with her. Someone steady and good in a fight. Someone who wouldn’t fly off the handle.