Ashes Ascendant: Blackwell Magic, #2

By Kevin McLaughin

Wild fire magic rips through Northshield University, and only Ryan Blackwell can stop it!

 

Still reeling from his near-death at the hands of a monstrous apparition, Ryan finds himself plunged into danger again far sooner than he's ready for. He's come to accept that his magic is a part of him he cannot escape - not if he wants to survive. But even his powers will be put to the most terrible tests.

 

Something sleeps at Northshield, ancient and incredibly powerful. But all the magic thrown about has caused it to stir. It dreams of fire and flames spread across campus. What will happen when it fully wakes?

 

Ryan has claimed Northshield is under his protection. Now that will be put to the ultimate test.

 

About the Author

Kevin McLaughlin is the multiple USA Today bestselling author of over a hundred works of science fiction and fantasy. He writes smart, fun adventures; the sort that keep you reading WAY past bedtime and leave you with no regrets the next day. He brings together a background of military, scientific, medical, and martial arts experience to create stories with vibrant characters which have thrilled millions of readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin McLaughin
• Release date: Mar 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781497729070

Kevin McLaughin

Kevin McLaughlin is a USA Today bestselling author of science fiction and fantasy novels, with over thirty books published. He has been a speaker at Boskone, Dragon Con, the Nebula Conference, 20Books, and other events. He believes in giving back to the writing community that helped him out during the early days of his career, so he uses his experience and success to boost others that the chain of writers helping writers continues unbroken.

Book preview

ONE

It was about an hour after the bugler played Taps, but was I tucked into my warm bed resting before another day of classes? No, I was not. My damned fool self was outside in the cold, hiding under a bush and watching a bunch of roses.

All around me, the campus stood nearly silent. The only sounds I could hear were the subtle noises of the night – rustling breeze shifting fallen leaves, crickets chirping, and somewhere not too far away a car starting up. Northshield University was a military college, and sometimes it got downright raucous after dark. But not tonight.

I held as still as I could, but it was bitterly cold. Vermont November, rolling in. Snow would be falling before too much longer. I shivered as an icy breeze blew over my face, despite the spells holding warmth to my body.

When I looked down, my magical Sight showed a thin band of blue light tracing a circle around me on the ground. I’d placed the circle there – just in case. I’d learned the hard way that sometimes the things that go bump in the night can have a bite as bad as their bark. The protective circle should help shield me. I was ready to call up a full shield – a bubble of magic and will – at a moment’s notice if things went really sideways. The circle ought to give me the few moments I’d need.

I felt ready for just about anything. I was probably over-prepared, but caution seemed warranted. Even if I was just after some critter stealing a few roses, I’d learned the hard way that preparation was worth its weight in gold.

The wind whispered down my neck, and I sucked in a breath at the sudden chill. The effort to keep even a little heat wrapped around me was a constant drain on both my magic and my attention. I marveled that the roses were still in bloom. The setup was absolutely remarkable. They’d been carefully planted against the side of a brick wall, shaped and tended so that the branches with their remaining blossoms climbed the wall like ivy. The specific spot where the roses grew had heating pipes running inside the wall, so right in that spot it was plenty warm.

It reminded me about something I’d read from medieval times, when monks would plant fruit trees up against a stone wall, pruning them to rest branches against the wall so that they would bear fruit even when the season said they shouldn’t. The same concept was at work here.

I had to envy the roses. That said, I wasn’t going to try to nestle into their sharp thorns. I was better off chilly than stabbed. So there they were, all toasty, and here I was a few feet away, freezing my tail off.

My gaze scanned the bushes, the small garden, and tracked to where a bunch of the blossoms had been cut away. The branches ended smoothly, like a sharp knife or paring shears had been used to trim the flowers. When I’d first seen the cut branches the other day, that’s what I thought had happened – that some person had come along, seen the flowers, and cut a few.

But then I checked in again this morning, and more flowers were gone. And whomever did the cutting left the tell-tale marks of magic behind. That put the situation firmly in my purview, for two reasons.

First, because I was pretty sure I had the strongest grasp of magical practice of anyone in the area. If there was a bigger fish in this pond, he hadn’t introduced himself yet. The US Army had stationed a Captain with some talent after the fiasco last month. All it took was several deaths and my blowing a hole in the parade ground to get their attention. I still had a mad on that they’d known about the magical nature of the campus, but let their guard down right when it was needed most.

My first meeting with Captain Miles had demonstrated to both of us that he was seriously minor league compared to me, much to both our surprise and his chagrin.

Aside from that, I only knew of one other magical practitioner nearby, an old gardener who’d helped me out a couple of times with advice. And then, when I’d needed it most, he’d stepped out to fight alongside me. The apparition we’d fought had tossed him into a tree. He didn’t die – quite – but was in intensive care for a while, and would be a long time recovering.

He was also the man who built this garden, and several others like it scattered around the Northshield campus. His talent wasn’t loud or flashy, but he had a touch with the green world. These gardens were a delight.

Which was the other reason that looking into this problem at the garden was my job. I owed him. As protective as I felt of the University as a whole, that doubled when it came to these little places into which he’d poured such time and love.

I began to wonder if the whole thing wasn’t a waste of time. Maybe whatever it was had come twice and was done. It wasn’t like the flowers would still be around much longer anyway, even with the heat from the building and the lingering magic of their caretaker.

Curiosity held me there a little longer, scanning the garden with my Sight, looking for any bright flash which might mean magic was being worked.

In fact, I was so busy looking for bright flashes that I almost missed the furtive movement under the bushes.

Something wriggled its way out of the ground near one rosebush. Something small, about the size of my hand. I squinted, trying to make out what it was. The shadows made it difficult to pick out any details, though. I kept as still as I could so I wouldn’t spook it. It shook bits of dirt from itself, then started to climb the branches of the rose.

It was about halfway up the branch when I heard it give a loud yelp. The cry sounded almost...human? It climbed until it reached a branch with several blooms on the end, and then stopped. I could See magical energy gathering at the spot.

That was what I’d been looking for. I stood quickly, calling magic to me as I moved. I’d been thinking about using my bubble-shield in reverse, directing it around the target rather than around me. That was the idea, anyway, but my legs screamed as I tried to use them. Sitting in the cold too long and then jumping into full motion wasn’t such a bright idea.

I slipped. The air rushed out of my lungs as my tailbone slammed into the frozen ground.

The thing in the rosebush squeaked in alarm, rustling through the leaves toward the ground. I gritted my teeth through the sharp pain in my calf muscle and bottom, and threw light toward the bush. It illuminated the roses with a bluish glow. The thing snarled, and I saw a scattering of little objects launch from the bush at me.

I raised my arm across my face, bringing up my shield – around me, now – at the same time. The objects passed through the shield without slowing down. Most of them bounced off my jacket, but I felt one embed itself in my hand. I looked down and saw a thorn stuck in the meaty part of my right palm. Which made sense. My shield was designed to stop magic, but wasn’t going to do anything against a physical object.

With a wince, I looked back at the thing in the bush, just in time to see the tiny figure lift a tuft of grass and duck back into the ground. This time, lit by my magic, I got a good look at what seemed for all the world like a tiny human. Shaped oddly, with features somehow out of proportion, but definitely human-like. And then it was gone.

I shook my head ruefully. It had been carrying away a rose as it ducked back into the earth. Seemed like the little creature’s evening had gone a bit better than my own. Climbing back to my feet, I decided it was time to call it a night and head back to my room. Round one to the little thing! I pried the thorn out as I walked, annoyance warring with amusement in my mind.

TWO

Ididn’t go back to watch for it the following night. I had a Physics exam to study for, and my schoolwork had already suffered enough this semester. So I stayed in and read up on thermodynamics. But the next morning I grabbed a few minutes while running from one class to another to check the roses again.

Sure enough, another rose was missing. Just one, the same as the other nights. There were only three blooms left. If I wanted to do anything else with the creature taking them, I didn’t have a lot of time.

The thing was, I wasn’t really sure I needed to do anything. It’s not like stealing rosebuds which would be dead and cold in another week or two anyway was hurting anyone. The way each was snipped from the plant with care and precision left me with the feeling this was not random vandalism. More was going on here than that, but the creature wasn’t hurting the garden. If anything, it was being incredibly careful not to hurt the roses bush.

OK, so it wasn’t doing any harm. I was curious about the little critter I’d seen. I’d seen magical creatures before. They were all over campus, attracted by the nexus of ley lines and the ambient energy infusing the place. But most of the things I’d seen were vague, poorly defined spirit beings, without physical form. This was something different, and I wanted to learn more about it.

So I decided to go back out again. This time, I was better prepared. First, I snuck a cookie from dinner. Then a bit before Taps I slipped into another layer of warm clothing. My roommate Fred was just getting ready for bed before lights out, and here I was getting ready to sneak out. He just shook his head at me.

Don’t get caught. We’ll all be in trouble.

True enough. As freshmen recruits, our lives were already complex enough. And by complex I mean ‘creatively hazed’ by the upperclassmen cadre. If I got caught it could mean additional restrictions and punishments for my entire platoon.

Not planning to, don’t worry, I replied. Then I wreathed myself with ‘don’t see me’ magic and slipped out the door. I did pass one upperclassman in the stairwell on the way out, but I simply stepped back into the corner and he walked right on by.

Once I was outside, I whispered quietly into the acorn pendant I wore around my neck.

Kittybreeze? Come out and play.

A breeze slid by my cheek, the feeling almost like soft fur. Kittybreeze and I had been solid friends for a while now. She was an air spirit, taking limited physical form as a small wind. And she felt to me all the world like a cat. Playful, curious, and intense. She’d helped me out; I’d helped her back. She pretty much lived in that pendant now, when she wasn’t out and about doing as she pleased. Tonight, I figured it would be best if I had some backup.

I only passed one other person on my way to the roses. I dipped back into the shadows and let him pass by before continuing on my way. The camouflage spell held without trouble, but it wasn’t making me truly invisible and there was no sense taking chances when I didn’t have to. When I reached the hidden wall with the roses, I counted the blooms. Still three, so I hadn’t missed my chance to see the little visitor tonight.

I carefully set the cookie on the ground just in front of the rosebush. Then I wove magic around the cookie, casting a small circle of energy. If anything touched the cookie it would trigger the spell, creating a small bubble in the spot which ought to hold any magical creature in place. No more falling on my tailbone to mess up the casting. I wasn’t sure the cookie would work as bait, but... I figured it was worth a shot.

Kittybreeze swirled up into the air and was off. With a thought I activated my Sight, allowing me to See the flow of magical energy, and saw her settling into a slow eddy over in one corner where the walls met. I brought my Sight back to the bushes. There I could still detect only traces of the gardener’s energy flowing. No sign of the small creature yet.

Around me I could feel the low background buzz of the powerful ley lines which intersected on the campus. Lines of raw magical energy, they criss-crossed the globe, and places where they met held enormous magical potential. That’s why Northshield was such an interesting place – in the sense of the old Chinese curse ‘may you live in interesting times’. The wild array of mystical beings that inhabited the area constantly amazed me.

Those leys were a constant temptation. I’d felt their power, and used it myself before. But it was too overwhelming. I’d almost burned myself alive the first time I’d tapped into one, and I’d nearly blown myself to bits the most recent time. They were alluring, but dangerous.

I’d been waiting there long enough to begin feeling the cold even through all the warm clothes when something sent shivers down my spine. I went very still, but my pulse jumped up in speed. The Northshield campus could be dangerous. I’d learned to trust those quiet instincts when they screamed out that something was wrong.

I thought I caught a flicker of movement in the sky somewhere above, just a flash of shadow across the stars. And then whatever it was moved on. My nerves relaxed a little, although I resolved to be more alert to my surroundings than I had been. I was too focused on watching the sky, though, and I missed seeing the little creature pop out of the ground again.

It was already most of the way to the cookie when I spotted its furtive movements. That brought my full focus back to the task at hand. I held my breath, not wanting to give away any sign of my presence. It crept ever closer to the treat, taking a step or two and then freezing in place, glancing around. Then it stepped into the circle. It reached out toward the cookie, hesitated another second, and then snatched it off the ground.

The bubble snapped into place around it, glowing sapphire blue