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  THE DYING ART OF MAGIC

  Copyright © 2018 Natalie Gibson

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Windswept

  an imprint of BHC Press

  Library of Congress Control Number:

  2017952234

  Print edition ISBN:

  978-1-946848-97-0

  Visit the publisher at:

  www.bhcpress.com

  Also available in trade softcover

  The Carrier Trilogy

  Hateful Burden

  Wretched Blood

  Witchbound

  For the Love of Magic

  Multi-author Anthologies

  In Creeps the Night

  A Winter’s Romance

  To Eric,

  Honestly, everything I write is dedicated to you. You are the reason I have time, energy and inspiration to write. I know you had about a thousand things you’d rather talk about, but you let me yammer on about my books night after night. Still do. I love you, all of it, and the squeezins’ too.

  To Camille,

  What can I say? You were my first friend and I love you. I hope to sit with you on a porch somewhere when we are old and talk about how ridiculous the young people are, and how much smarter and more attractive we were.

  You were the first to laugh at my jokes and encourage my writing. There is a bit of you in every good character I write. You are the picture of beauty, kindness, poise and intelligence I strive to paint in my books, except I have to add some flaws or no one would believe my heroines.

  Nathalia was dead. She had to be: she’d committed suicide. She could remember dying, but just now she’d woken from a dream. In it, she stood high on a cold desert plateau. The sun was hours from rising. From every side she could hear falling rocks loosened by scrabbling claws and hooves of those who answered her call. They couldn’t resist. Their monstrous hands came into view first, then their heads and shoulders, until they stood in a ring around her. Their chests heaved. Their mouths, filled with stained but razor-sharp teeth, snapped at her.

  They were hairy and swollen with the violence and blood they gorged themselves on every night. Complexions looked ruddy even in the dim light. They longed to flee the desert where there was so little shelter from the incinerating sun, but she was here. They craved her blood more than anything. She was life itself and she stood totally unprotected. Or so they thought.

  They did not know that she was the chosen warrior. Now that they were in her presence, nothing could save them from her. She was death. She was salvation. She would end the terrible plight of the betrayers’ reign over men. She rotated slowly, meeting each unredeemable in the eye.

  She spoke silently, using her telepathic ability, “I am Ereshkigal, Atropos, Beletseri, and Morta. Having broken the promise and feasted on the blood of your brothers, you have lost the ability to control your cells. You are no longer Nephilim, Guardians of mankind, but Akhkharu, addicted to violence, and as such you will be the first to die.”

  These were not the words they expected. Her charges against them brought many rushing toward her, but a few turned to run. Both strategies were useless. A white dagger, the DakuAhu, appeared in her hand, where there was nothing before. She called each of them by name, binding them and forcing their lifelines to the surface. The very earth held them fast as she sliced through each line and the screams of Akhkharu filled the desert. It was horrifying, but they did not deserve to live. She was the prosecutor and executor all in one, but it would not always be this way. The One would be of age soon and then Nathalia would have a partner. Eiran appeared behind her. She knew, rather than saw. He wrapped his strong arms around her and she leaned her head back to rest on his shoulder. Nathalia and Eiran vanished into thin air.

  That’s when she’d woke. She would call it a nightmare, with all its blood and monsters, but a nightmare was scary. This hadn’t been. She hadn’t been frightened of anything. She’d never felt more confident and in control than in that very real dream. Except when she had killed herself. She had definitely been in control then, which brought her back to her conundrum. She should be dead, completely unable to dream or contemplate the meaning of those dreams. There was no heaven or hell, so she should be without consciousness.

  But she was conscious, so she gathered as much information about her surroundings as she could without moving or opening her eyes. If danger surrounded her, surprise might be her only weapon and she didn’t intend to waste it. She lay naked on a large table. It felt rough like stone or concrete. The sun shone down on her. She could feel its warmth on her skin and see its light coming through her eyelids. Nathalia’s telepathic skill included sensing the minds around her, minds that she could broadcast her thoughts to. A blip crossed her brain’s radar but then disappeared, like the person had left range. There was nothing human here. Something feminine reassured her. Unrecognizable. Vast and all around her, she sensed the personality of the wind.

  She risked a peek. It was impossible to see anything. The sunlight made a large circle on the dirt floor, but beyond that light, the darkness masked everything else. Still nothing moved or made any sound; the room was empty.

  She sat up expecting to be stiff and sore. It couldn’t have been very long since Michael pistol whipped her into what he hoped was submission. Boy, had he been wrong. She’d never felt so strong and good. Her head didn’t hurt. She anticipated that moving her head would set the world spinning just as it had after those blows. Something grazed her shoulder and Nathalia jumped a mile, flipping legs overhead and landing on her feet in the crouched position.

  Her long brown hair slid from behind her ears. She fingered it in amazement. How could her hair have grown back? She’d clipped it off close to the scalp just shortly before Michael had beaten her. He’d made her do it because he was afraid of the magic in the binding and loosening of hair. She used that magic to keep him from her thoughts.

  She ran her fingers through the luscious locks trying to understand what happened. It felt silky smooth, like someone brushed it a hundred times. Something else differed about it too, but she couldn’t pinpoint it. She rubbed it again. Not just her scalp, the actual hair had nerves. She separated a strand to examine and found it thicker than she remembered. Healthier too. She tried to tie it up, but didn’t have a hair band. The silky strands slipped right out of whatever configuration she tried. Giving up, she let it hang around her shoulders.

  Nathalia backed herself against the wall. She felt more secure like that; an attack could only come from the front. The dirt here in the shade cooled her feet and she marveled at the feel of each grain, digging her toes in as deep as she could. Out of the sunlight, the air chilled her and she tingled all over. Something was wrong with her; she was being bombarded with the details of every second. Taking a deep cleansing breath, she tried to center her mind, but got distracted by the air in her lungs. Her blood absorbed it and each cell carried its precious cargo to a specific destination. She could see every cell in her body when she closed her eyes. She shook her head in an attempt to clear it, but that too brought a sensation she took time to study. Had she been drugged?

  Nathalia focused on the big picture. Escape. Her prison was round, maybe twenty-five feet across. The flat roof featured a round hole that let in the su
nlight. The walls curved. She slid to her right along the wall, keeping in the shadows. She could feel the ornately carved walls against her back, but she didn’t stop to examine them. She knew that if she did, she’d be pulled into their particulars. She couldn’t have that. She had to find a way out before whoever brought her here came back, but she couldn’t make herself move as fast as she wanted. Each step brought a unique sensation to her body.

  Her fingers came to an opening in the wall, and she turned her head to the right to examine it. The smooth rectangular door opening, taller than what was normal, was carved right out of the rock. Across on the other side of the opening, the wall continued to curve back around toward where she’d started following it. If she had jumped up or walked the other direction then she would have found the door faster. She could see the carvings now across the way and they were detailed indeed. Under the drawings of people and animals lay rows and rows of indentions made by a wedge-shaped stylus. The room was filled with cuneiforms, the oldest form of written language in the known world, and in a greater number than anyone knew existed. If she ever got out of here, and could find this place again, it would go down in history as the greatest archaeological find ever.

  Nathalia spun around and flung herself down the hall and almost ran smack into a giant statue that filled the entire corridor. Startled, she screamed but nothing came out.

  She was mute.

  She reached up to her throat. A jagged scar marked where she’d sliced through it with a pair of scissors. It had been the only way to keep Michael from hurting her friends any further. She’d killed herself and focused all those suicidal feelings, all that guilt over the death of her friends, all the evil black energy from the Capacitors, toward Michael. Using her telepathic broadcasting ability, she funneled her own death through him, forcing him to commit suicide too. That had been real and the scar was the evidence.

  She took a moment to study the statue of a muscular young man. This had been a fine specimen for sculpting and study of the nude form, like the statue of David. He stared at her with blank eyes from the shadowy hall, but didn’t frighten her. She looked at his face and felt sure she had seen him before. Then she remembered her dream. She knew his name was Eiran Kafziel. How she knew remained a mystery.

  She wondered how long ago he had lived. Then she caught a glimpse of the carving to her left. Nathalia stepped back inside to get a closer look. The pictorial story all around the room featured this man, whose image was forever captured in stone. Nathalia could not read the cuneiform, but she could follow the story.

  Each separate section of the wall held an aspect of Eiran’s life, but they followed no particular order. First he carried a woman’s body through flood waters. Next he fought in a great battle, near a pile of his kills. Across the way showed him as a child, so hungry he devoured every crop in his kingdom. There he mourned the loss of love. Beside that depicted the two meeting. The segment depicting Eiran’s murder varied from the others. It had no detail. Surely whoever carved Eiran’s life story knew the details of his demise.

  Nathalia stood back to garner a sense of the image as a whole. Eiran was in focus, though the woman with him the focus. She both stood triumphant over him and cradled him at the same time. The woman’s face was obscured. Their local and circumstance unclear: a haze surrounded the two.

  Studying every inch of those carvings, Nathalia forgot the urgency of escape. She felt every indention with her highly sensitive fingers, wondering at the detail so unlike it’s obvious age. It was completely different than Sumerian drawings she had studied. Had it not been for the cuneiforms, she would have sworn she found a modern piece of art. Realizing the sun had set stunned her. The moon, luminous, almost full, now shone down through the skylight. More than bright enough to see, it was easier in some ways than the full light of day, because no shaft of glaring light made shadows. She found herself staring across to the corridor where the statue stood staring back. She felt sorry for this beautiful work of art never admired properly by the public. She decided to get a better look.

  She crossed cautiously to it, looking around it as she did, to ensure no one came down the hall. She couldn’t keep her curious hands from validating all her eyes took in. She reached out and put her palm on its chest. As soon as she made contact visions flooded her mind. She could actually smell him and feel the warmth radiating off his body. She closed her eyes, immersed in the happy images of their lovemaking.

  There was magic here. Nathalia was a technical virgin. She’d never felt a man between her thighs, yet she could remember the feel of it. Odd to have a memory of something never experienced. It felt like having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time.

  Nathalia did not find men desirable and now she actually ached for him. Disgusted with herself she tried to shut them out but failed. There were thoughts of his hands on her, turning her to get a better angle for his thrusting, tugging at her nipples, and shackling her wrists to keep her from getting away, as if she ever wanted to leave his embrace.

  As a Daughter of Women she had been taught respect for all types of thaumaturgy, but her own body’s response to the heterosexual images repulsed her. Magic or no, she must stop this. Men were vile creatures to be used as gene pools and work horses. She stepped back, knowing that breaking contact would terminate whatever trance this was, but her hand stuck on something. She looked down to figure it out and stared dumbfounded for a moment at his hand encircling her wrist.

  Eiran stepped forward, toward her, into the moonlight. As he walked forward, the air pushed the detritus off his skin. This was no statue, but a very real, very aroused man who’d stood motionless covered in gray dust. She could see the trail her fingers left on his pectorals. She started shaking her head no; this could not really be happening.

  Just another vision, another nightmare.

  She looked at his face just as the moon caught his multicolored pupils. Those eyes could only mean one thing: Eiran was a Guardian.

  Nathalia had no idea where this special breed of men got this power, since it certainly was not like her own, which women generated for their own uses. Guardians were secretive and possibly dangerous. Though he was not the first Nathalia had dealt with, she knew very little detail about them.

  Her position as Abbess of the Austin branch of the Daughters exposed her to several and she knew they were obedient to women. She raised herself to her full height. She knew she couldn’t speak to him with her damaged vocal cords, but she was afraid to use her telepathy. She had broken the only rule of the Daughters of Women by using their sacred communal power to hurt and kill another person. Even if it had been Michael, a murderer who was threatening them, by breaking the rule she would be cut off from the Capacitors’ collected power. It would have been Maeve’s first order of business as new Abbess. The power gathering in the back of her head, making her warm and tingly, astonished her. The flush reached her face just as she realized that she had not been cut off from the holy ones. Thank you, Maeve. She gathered the euphoric energy, pulling from the Capacitors as she always had, and broadcast to the Guardian. I am Abbess Primo Nathalia Lovejoy, and I have not given you permission to hold me. Release me at once, Eiran Kafziel, I command you.

  He froze at the sound of his own name inside his head. He did not release her, but pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her. Nathalia could not stop the images of them making love playing in her head. She seemed so happy and satisfied, so unlike her normal self, that she allowed them to roll on. He stared intently at her with those unnaturally beautiful eyes and for a moment she forgot to be stern. He was stunningly attractive for a man and she didn’t pull away when he bent his head and kissed her.

  It wasn’t hard and aggressive in the way she had imagined it would be, but she felt like she belonged in his arms as she had never felt she belonged anywhere before. He kissed her sweetly as if relieved she was here and had missed her, not as if he had a right to her, as Michael always had. She imagined how wonderful it would be to
give herself to someone who felt this way about her. She had never really felt loved, only owned.

  She firmly pulled away. She had to stop acting this way. She didn’t even know where she was or how she had gotten here, and yet there she stood naked, kissing a naked stranger. And a man, no less. She put her hand on his chest when he stepped forward to close the gap between them. A mistake on her part. Meant to stop him, but it must have seemed like a caress. As soon as her hand lay over his heart the images started again. Memories of lascivious demeanor, peculiar positions and lewd acts washed out every other thought.

  She made the sign for stop and signaled that he should stay where he was. Nathalia backed up further, but left her hand up. They were not touching, except where his hand encircled her other wrist.

  He started to speak to her in a language she didn’t understand, but it sounded slightly familiar. She wracked her brain trying to think of a word that could help convey “let go,” or “stop” or “no.” Nothing she thought at him made any difference. Egyptian, Arabic, Hebrew and he still advanced. She must have thought-pushed something wrong, something that actually encouraged him, because he smiled.

  Nathalia might be a virgin, but she knew that look. This was about to get intense if she couldn’t convey that she did not want this. He was a man, after all, and he might take what he wanted from her even without her consent. In a last ditch effort she reached out and slapped him hard across the face. The sound echoed in the empty stone room. It was harsh, but could not be misinterpreted. Eiran let her hand go, but as soon as their contact was broken, all she wanted was for him to hold it again. He spoke to her and from the sound of it he was apologizing, but confused.