Fire & Ink Read online

  Colin, who'd been about to take a bite, paused. He eventually took the bite anyway, sitting naked beside David in bed, but he did not look up after.

  "What?"

  "I know you're a good witch without me. You already were. Before me." Colin nibbled at escaping meat, licked a fingertip. "I'm only tired. Hungry. Thank you for the sandwich."

  "If you—"

  Both their heads came up. Instinctive. Turning toward the south, toward the bottom of their hill, outside the house.

  Colin said, "Fire—" The word hit the evening and hung, a warning banner of searing danger.

  David threw himself out of bed. Grabbed a shirt and pajama pants. "This house's shielded—everyone on this block should be—but that's only a simple charm, whatever I could spare, it won't hold against something major—you can't tell if it's magical, can you—"

  Colin yanked on a wayward pair of David's sweatpants, didn't bother with a shirt, ran out of the bedroom right behind him. "I don't think so—I mean I think it's not, but I'm not an expert on house fires—"

  Conflagration. Burning. Smoke and fear on the wind. Razor-wire of emotion through the night.

  They'd both picked it up half a minute before it happened in reality: before overloaded wiring gave way, electricity kindled, a curtain became a torch. He'd heard the echo from his own advance-warning spells. Colin must've heard it either from him or from that inborn therianthrope attunement to magic, and this was magic under threat. Peril sizzled along David’s senses.

  They ran out of the back gate and down the street, tasting dread and broken house-wards, hearing alarms and cries for help that bounced forward and back and summoned neighbors and local sensitives. Five houses away from theirs, it'd be—down the slope, and he could see it now, could see the wall going up like flashpaper—the Lee house, that was, he distantly knew them the way he knew neighbors who'd not been clients, he thought the father was an optometrist and the mother a veterinarian, and they had two kids—

  Those house-wards hadn't been his. That family'd either gone to someone else or tried setting their own, one of the kids with just enough power to think they could handle it, maybe—

  He'd always thought broken protections tasted sour. Spoiled milk, bad apples, an identifiable wrongness in the mix. This one left dry ash and crumbling wood on his tongue.

  Colin's face was pale under vicious red and yellow fire-washed highlights. His eyes were huge and pale, too, translucent as watered silk in the night. "What can we do? Can we stop it from here?"

  "No, it's too big—" He wasn't strong enough for that. Not without getting up close. Not even with Colin's assistance. Why wasn't he stronger?

  Other neighbors appeared. Shouting carried across elm-lined blocks and balconies. Faces and fright began turning to their white witch for aid. They'd noticed his arrival on the scene. Containment necessary. Rescue necessary. People inside. No one'd made it out.

  Not yet.

  "I'll go in." He did not think about how terrified he was, saying so, seeing flames carve eerie wounds in evening sky. He wouldn't be able to save the house. He knew he wouldn't. And he'd need to be closer to get the family out. Inside. "I'll need your help. As much as you can."

  "David—" Colin stretched out a hand, caught his arm, but in the end only said, "Do you want me to go in with you?"

  "No, stay out here. I won't have to shield us both that way." And Colin'd be safer. For a given value of safe, standing shirtless and visible on the lawn beside next-door's rosebushes. "I'll make it fast."

  Colin nodded and did something invisible—David still didn't know exactly how shapeshifter power, innate power, worked. Not even scholars did, and now wasn't the time for academic inquiries—and the edges of a deep thrumming lake of magic opened up, rewrote boundaries, encompassed him. For a split second he found himself amazed by depth, texture, profundity. He knew himself to be small and human and wide-eyed in the face of long centuries. He could wave hands about and tug at strands and rivers in the air and use tools and tricks to coax magic to do what he wanted. Colin Rue, like the few others of his kind, was magic.

  Embodied. Existing in swirled knots and gatherings of enchantment. At the intersection of breath and bone and impossible shape-changing and the heartbeat of the world like a vast unfurling hymn of life.

  Colin couldn't do spells the way a human could, couldn't separate out streams and strings to manipulate, because he lived drenched in iridescence day to day. He could, however, make that billowing reservoir available for someone else to tap. If he chose. If he trusted that person. If that person wouldn't drain him dry.

  Normally their channel rippled like a small rivulet, a raindrop-track, a thread through stone canyons: enough to touch, enough to share power if David asked for it, drop by drop, as much as needed.

  Colin had flung the stones outward and turned canyons into seas. David could take as much as he could handle, and he could keep taking it.

  When he opened his mouth he did not know what he meant to say. You're beautiful. We can do this. I love you.

  A window shattered behind him. Musical heat-death. Collapsing like time: down to no choices at all.

  "Go," Colin said. "Save lives."

  He wanted to kiss Colin, and they had no time, none left. He nodded and pulled his shirt up over his face and pressed a glowing voiceless throb of emotion into the coruscating web that bound them, hoping it was enough. And he sprinted into fire.

  Curtains of orange and scarlet instantly licked at his skin. Wreathed walls and floorboards in shimmering doom. Blew dry flecks of flame toward his lungs when he breathed. Barefoot, searching through haze and groaning beams and embers, he grabbed strands of seeking power, flung them outward. Heartbeats. Life. Presence.

  His shields slid and swirled along his skin, hair, each inhale and exhale. Green leaves and forest coolness met an inferno and held for now. Those leaves relied on other support: tabby-plush and rich as wet sand under starry oceans. Alone he would've made it maybe halfway in.

  Both kids were in the media room upstairs. The little girl—he couldn't recall either of their names—wasn't conscious. Her brother, panicked and untrained and flickering like a candle with pure terror and an evanescent glimpse of weather-sense, had tried to carry her. The floor screeched in agony as David ran in. The boy batted at smoke and gasped, "I'm sorry—I can't—"

  "I can take her, if you can walk—" He threw spinning braids of shield-walls outward. Around all three of them. Strain took hold. Minor distractions to his focus. Not a problem yet.

  Half the stairs crumbled. David wrenched power out of lapping moonlit seas and slammed it into a foothold. Colin caught breath intangibly but found balance again and stayed heart-true, reliable, there for the taking.

  He hauled both kids out onto the front lawn. The girl was breathing. She'd be okay, a haphazard touch of his hand reassured as much. Her brother's tears streaked clean water through dirt. "It's my fault—I thought—Dad said I could handle charms for—"

  "You and I need to have a talk with your dad about talents and classification—" He coughed, spun back to the house. The left side crackled: a vicious beacon in the night. Sirens floated in the distance. Neighbors ran over to gather up children, to flock around them. "We'll get you apprenticed after this to a decent weather-witch—how many more? Your parents?"

  "And my grandma—"

  "Okay. Stay here."

  "Can I help—"

  "No!" The boy looked stricken. David shouted, over the crash of a timber falling, "Take care of your sister!" and ran. Three more people. One elderly.

  He found their grandmother on the first floor, lying on her bed while hungry ochre tongues licked up the back wall. She wasn't heavy. But his lungs felt dry, and his arms trembled. Adrenaline. Exertion. Aching tattoos along his shoulders, his back. Charms drained to the utmost.

  The stairs were completely gone when he got back in. Ambulances and a fire crew'd arrived, but they'd be too late. He felt the collapse imminent, the secon
d story about to fall. He reached out, found power at fingertips, twisted it into ropes and stepping-stones. Stumbled, staggered, nearly fell. Dizzy without oxygen, with too much magic used too quickly. He needed hands, ink, paper. Gestures sketched in air worked, and worked better with Colin behind him, but used up his own personal strength.

  As if that weren't gone already. As if he weren't leaning on Colin entirely, power he shouldn't've had, motions that alone should've only blown out a candle.

  Both parents were in the bedroom and awake and aware, but the door was blocked by debris. David flung an exhausted hand that way and missed but hit it enough to work. They spilled out, half-smothered and babbling about the children, the family—

  He jerked his head in the direction of outside. They got it. They kept hold of his hands.

  Coldness cascaded in. Icy air. Water. Water?

  Firefighters. Right. He was aware that his thoughts felt slower, dragged down by numb physical focus. Get everyone out. Try not to die. Stay shielded. Get back to Colin.

  His shields buckled under heat, around all three of them, but did not break.

  They had to go out the back door. The front was burning.

  Lurching around the corner, they came into sight of knots of neighbors, emergency crews, blankets and fire-hoses. Mrs. Lee cried, "Michael—Grace—" and ran for her children, her husband close behind. Young Michael, sitting with his sister, had one hand flung out toward the house.

  Coolness, David thought raggedly. Not only the fire-hoses. Ice-laden breezes. Michael wasn't very powerful but would be a weather-worker and was trying hard. The boy's face crumpled with relief upon seeing him, and then he got buried in his mother's arms.

  One of the firefighters shouted, "Anyone left?"

  "No!" The answer ended in a cough. He had to make sure, no guests Michael'd forgotten about, no kids hopping a fence into that backyard to chase a ball. This time it hurt, and badly: overstretched muscles, hands extended, pulling apart the catastrophe to check—no one left, no fluttering life trapped or caught—thank god, thank all the gods ever—

  Colin's magic held him upright on the lawn, wreathed in opalescent glinting silver and a beating pulse. It kept him breathing. It kept him alive. Shored up those defenses when his own would've been long dead. When he would've been—

  But he was fine, he was safe, everyone was safe, he'd done what he could, the family was out of harm's way. Sudden triumph battled shakiness and swamped it in exhilaration for a moment.

  He lifted a hand to acknowledge cheering bystanders, neighbors, families who'd watched their neighborhood witch rescue kids. Ariana Robinson seemed to be organizing donations of food and clothing with ruthless efficiency. Priscilla Chen, at her side taking notes, waved at him and then began looking very concerned indeed. One of the paramedics materialized next to him and held out a blanket. He took it, half-listening to suggestions about sitting down and getting checked out.

  He turned, looking for his other half, meaning to beckon Colin into his share of appreciation and triumph and applause—

  The world broke. Snapped. No—the thread broke. The link between them. Colin's magic—

  He landed on both knees. No chance to catch himself. Shock like a spear through unsuspecting lungs.

  Every bruise and pain leapt in to remind him that he'd just run three times through a burning building. He wasn't hurt, more like the reminder that he should've been hurt, singed hair and unclothed arms, as his shields gave up final ghosts and vanished, leaving heat enough to warm his back but not burn—

  He couldn't feel mischievous velvet. Couldn't find tabby-striped woodsmoke presence in his head. Empty.

  Scoured clean. By fire.

  Colin had never withdrawn. Had opened up every part of himself to meeting David's frantic demands for more strength, safeguards, walking on ruined air.

  He howled at himself to get to his feet.

  Cement-block legs. An ungainly wobble. Two steps. Five.

  Colin lay beside the rosebush wall on that next-door neighbor's lawn. He must've simply taken steps out of the way, not disturbing anyone's rescue efforts, and fallen. He'd even landed gracefully, as if planned, as if he couldn't be less than beautiful even when—

  "No." He couldn't hear his own voice. Rasps of soot and stunned anguish. "No."

  Colin's feet were bare and bone-pale under burning light, over night-green grass. They looked cold. He looked cold.

  He'd been warm earlier.

  His hair was rumpled from having David's hands in it, moments or decades before. He'd been alive, so alive, laughing exultantly as David pinned his wrists to the bed and bent down to kiss him—

  "No. Please."

  Colin didn't stir when gathered up into useless arms. Long limbs fell like discarded twigs.

  "Please. Please wake up. I'm sorry, kitten, I'm so sorry, I—I love you—"

  He heard the words. Words he'd not said to Colin. Not aloud. Not shared. Silence battered his ears, then and now.

  Why hadn't he? Why had he been so scared? So afraid of holding too tightly? Colin liked being held. Liked being kept warm and safe, only he wasn't safe, not anymore, because—

  Colin was breathing.

  This fact landed belatedly: in the minute rise and fall of that beloved chest, in the exhale that brushed his collarbone. In the faintest fairy-wing flutter of pulse.

  "Oh—" David said, and started to cry.

  One of the paramedics glanced their way, ran over, held out David's unthinkingly discarded blanket. "Sir?"

  "He's hurt." All that mattered. Everything that mattered. What he'd done. "I didn't mean—it's my fault, I did this—"

  "May we take a look at him, sir?" The man threw a glance back at his partner. David abruptly realized how his own comment might've sounded, in the light of a fire and demonstrably inadequate wards that hadn't been ordered from him. "Was he in the house?"

  "No, he—" He couldn't say it. The words would kill him. "I know what—I did this to him, I—"

  "You got the kids out," observed the second paramedic, heading their way. One ambulance'd gone already: treating family members for the aftermath and smoke inhalation, no doubt, but they'd all be fine. They would be. "We saw you, you're a hero, man. And—hey, I know you. Local witch, right? Magic hands and all? You do art?"

  "Yes—no, I'm not a—a hero—I don't know." He cradled Colin's limp form, sitting on crushed grass, aware that he himself could use assistance breathing, thinking, existing. He knew what he'd done. He knew. "Can you help? I know what's wrong. It's power drain. Serious."

  They did another round of trading glances. "He's a witch, too?"

  David felt his eyes widen as that secondary shock slammed home. No. No, Colin wasn't a witch.

  More rare than that. And a target for anyone unscrupulous enough—and skilled enough—to weave a binding-spell into a collar.

  What he'd just asked, when he'd asked for help—he couldn't say no, not now that he'd mentioned power, but he couldn't say yes—

  "He…" No words turned up to form saving explanations. "I mean… he's…"

  Colin stirred in his arms. Made a sound: not a word, but questioning, awakening, coming back.

  David clutched him more tightly. "Kitten? I'm here. I'm right here. I'm so sorry."

  "…David?" Colin breathed in, blinked, shook his head as if clearing cobwebs, settled back down to rest against David's chest. "For what? I feel like I've been flattened by a gryphon, but I'm okay."

  "Are you?" Therianthrope magic meant innate magic. Innate magic meant interwoven with life. He felt these realizations rather than thought them, laced with dawning horror at the scale of possible harm.

  Colin did have inhumanly grand reservoirs to draw on, to feed to his witch or warlock or academic theoretical sorcerer. But those reservoirs were tied to his self, his existence. Human magicians used power as tools: grabbing sparkling lines out of the air, diverting them, directing them, not internalizing. Power drain for a fellow witch might mean s
apped energy and an inability to grip with enervated hands at slippery ribbons.

  For a shapeshifter, an internal magic-source—

  "Well… no." Colin shut his eyes again, causing David's heart to crumple and shred itself. "I'm so tired I can't think. Are you okay?"

  "I'm not the one who—"

  "Would you two like to come along to the hospital?" asked the paramedic who'd known who David was. He had a round innocent face, brown skin and brown hair and brown eyes, buoyantly young. "We've got some new infusions that'll help witches bounce back faster, mallow and licorice with boosts from our resident healers."

  David gazed at Colin, helpless.

  The other paramedic, older, gave them a sideways thoughtful glance, and said nothing.

  Colin tipped his head back to look up at his witch, clearly thinking the same thoughts about healers and temptation and his own identity. David's brain whirled, and came up with no solid ground.

  "I think I'd like to just go home," Colin decided. Weakly. Far too weakly. "Unless—David, should they look at you—"

  "No, I'm good." Shakiness hit him as he said the words, from the fire—oh fuck, he'd walked through fire, he'd rescued kids, with Colin beside him—and from the descending crash. But their house sat white-painted and well-warded just up the hill.

  He knew Colin couldn't walk. He scooped his kitten into arms. Vowed with every scrap of strength that he'd get them home.

  "We can at least drop you off," offered the younger paramedic. "You're just up the hill, right? Joe, you want to sit with them in back, check him out?"

  "Sure," Joe agreed obligingly, though he kept studying Colin. David sorted through exhausted despairing options: surely the man couldn't recognize a shapeshifter on sight. Colin was devastatingly lovely but wasn't a celebrity or instantly identifiable outside the magical community—though he might be so within coven circles, local and national, and if Joe had ever—

  Joe's hands were professional, helping them get up. He caught David's arm when they all would've fallen over. David couldn't think beyond accepting the assistance.

  In the ambulance the man checked Colin's pulse, got out equipment to listen to his heart, frowned a little. Colin tried to protest solicitous care. David, now more terrified, glared at him. Colin gave up, which was more frightening than everything else put together, and put his head on David's shoulder.