Enchantress under fire, p.1
Enchantress Under Fire, page 1
part #4 of Arcane Artisans Series
Copyright 2019 by Amy Spahn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law. For permissions, visit www.acspahn.com.
The characters, places, and events in this book are fictitious, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover design by Jenny Zemanek at Seedlings Design Studio
For Declan
Enchantress Under Fire
It’s time to risk everything.
Adrienne has lost more than she ever imagined. Friends lie dead. The man she loves has been captured. The alliance she worked so hard to forge is close to breaking. She might have a plan to rebalance the world’s chaotic magic, but enacting it requires the help of other enchanters. Unfortunately, they’ve all been recruited or killed by Geralt. That leaves her with only one option: infiltrate his cult.
Masking her innate magical ability, Adrienne embarks on a dangerous mission to lure cult members to her side. That won't be easy since Geralt has bought his followers’ loyalty and filled them with suspicion of the outside world. Adrienne has little to offer against his promises of protection and belonging. But manipulation goes two ways, and Adrienne is no stranger to using the cult’s tactics for her own ends.
When Adrienne begins to bond with those she only intended to exploit, her compassion for the cult members clashes with her loyalty to the Underground. Caught between two worlds, with countless lives on the line, Adrienne must figure out what she truly stands for before she loses what little she has left.
Contents
Enchantress Under Fire
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
Author’s Note
About the Author
Other Books by A. C. Spahn
Preview of Endurance: The Complete Series
Chapter 1
IT’S DIFFICULT TO ABANDON THE FACE you’ve had your entire life. As I prepared the materials for my enchantments, I studied my features in the bathroom mirror. My expression was calm, no sign of the fear quivering inside me. I’d spent the last few months learning to fake confidence.
My normally deep beige skin looked ashen, my face gaunt and my dark eyes sunken. My cheekbones stood out and my hair hung like a lifeless black curtain around my head. Endless weeks of fighting had taken a toll on me. I stared into my own eyes, eyes that looked like they had never sparkled with laughter, had never even known what laughter was.
I could have borne the combat. The months hiding in the woods. The rising instability of magic, the pressure of it within my skull.
The losses. Pete. Veronica. Tamika. Countless others whose names I hadn’t even known.
Desmond.
My hands gripped the edge of the counter. I sucked in a dry breath.
I could have borne it all. If any of it had mattered.
Yes, we’d come up with a solution to fix magic’s growing instability. Yes, we’d discovered a way to cure those driven insane by enchantment. Yes, the paranormal world had united behind me against our mutual enemies. But those victories would mean nothing if we lost the war.
Only days ago, Geralt and his cult had won the battle for San Francisco. After defeating my alliance of paranormals, they’d turned their attention hardcore onto hunting me down. Whispers spread through San Francisco’s streets of raids on paranormal families, interrogations conducted in unlit alleys. They couldn’t track me with magic, not with all the anti-tracking enchantments I had cast over the past year, but they were determined to find me anyway. Geralt would stop at nothing until he had sacrificed me to release the magic he’d imprisoned in my body.
My hand rose to trace the familiar pattern of the enormous enchantment tattoo around my heart. There is another way to heal the imbalance in the world’s magic, I reminded myself. You don’t have to die. Gritting my teeth, I let my hand drop.
I would make it all matter, or die trying. It was time to risk it all.
I laid my materials out silently on the bathroom counter. A bottle of liquid foundation. A photo of a young, average-looking Hispanic woman living in Argentina, taken from page forty-seven of online search results so there’d be no chance of someone here recognizing her. A pair of noise-canceling headphones, stolen from an electronics store down the street. A length of cotton rope, thick and oiled smooth. And me. I would focus and channel the magic through these objects, but I myself had to serve as its target.
Putting an enchantment on a person was never easy. Putting it on someone like me, who already bore an enchantment, and a strong one at that, was even touchier. If I made the slightest mistake, lost focus for even an instant, the differing magics might clash in my brain and steal my sanity. Worse, they might unleash the magic already trapped within me, killing me, and with no one left to direct all of that raw power, the uncontrolled magic could level the city block.
My hand shook as I unscrewed the cap on the foundation bottle. Focus, channel, target. The three parts of an enchantment. A fleshwriter might risk using themselves as all three, but my way was safer. I just hoped it was safe enough.
I was stalling. Time to get on with it. Yet I continued staring at my gaunt face, rehashing old mistakes and fearing new ones.
Kendall appeared in the doorway to the bathroom. Behind her, the itty-bitty apartment sat almost untouched by our presence over the last couple days. It was a safehouse of the former Void Union, a last resort in case of trouble. Stocked with food and other survival supplies, but not equipped for comfort.
My best friend’s red hair lay floppy instead of spiked like she preferred. Her black jeans and dinosaur print t-shirt were the same ones she’d worn for the last three days, since she snuck back into the city with me after the rest of the Underground evacuated. “Hey,” she said softly. “Do you need anything else?”
“No, you’ve brought it all.” I stuffed down my fears and forced a smile. “I’m just memorizing my face. The real me, before I change it.”
“You know cameras exist, right?” Kendall came to stand behind me, several inches taller than my five-foot-nothing. Her hand rested on my shoulder. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I do.”
“I know they took Desmond, but there has to be another way to rescue him. We could sneak across the bridges. Re-join Maribel and Sam and the Voids and the rest of the Underground. Keep fighting to win back the city.”
“That doesn’t solve the bigger problem. It’s not only about Desmond.” A wave of magic pounded against my skull. I didn’t even wince. The pressure had grown so oppressive these last months, I’d gotten used to the constant thrumming. “The imbalances in magic are getting worse. I think if we don’t do something to dispel the buildup soon, the ghosts and vortices and other symptoms we haven’t even noticed yet will break this city. Sam and I may be strong enchantresses, but the two of us can’t cast the enchantment to heal the entire region’s magic on our own. We’ll need help. A lot of help. Dozens of enchanters.”
“But infiltrating the cult ...”
“It’s the only place left in the state, maybe on the whole continent, where we can find enchanters strong enough. Magic’s instability is worsening. There’s no time to go searching the rest of the world, hoping we stumble upon someone who can help.” I met her eyes in the mirror. “And you know that.”
Kendall’s arms crossed protectively over her chest. Her gaze dropped. “I know.” She nodded to the items arranged on the counter. “Go ahead. I’m here if you need any other supplies.”
I squeezed my hands into fists, letting them tremble. When I released my grip, they held steady. I picked up the bottle of foundation, laid my hand beside the photo of the woman, and poured out a line of liquid, starting beside her face and ending at my skin.
The room’s magic beat against my body, kadumkadumkadum, trying to batter its way in. I held it off, for now. I’d done the minimum amount of enchanting necessary over the past few days, letting my mind and body recover from the battle. This would be the most delicate enchanting I had ever done, and it would require a trainload of magic. I had to be ready to control it.
Deep breaths. My thoughts ran wild, worries and fears voicing in quick succession. What if this didn’t work? What if I drove myself insane? What if I unleashed the magic in my body, and that raw, uncontrolled power leveled half the city? What if Geralt saw through the disguise? What if, what if, what if? I let the thoughts go, not trying to restrain them, letting images of myself in gruesome pain, in the throes of torture, in a catatonic state, slavering and insane, run freely through my mind.
Gradu
To the box I added my hopes for this enchantment, my breathless desire to topple Geralt’s reign from right underneath him. My feelings and fears for Desmond had to go away, too. If ever there was a distraction, it was him. I added my fury over the losses we’d sustained. My thirst for revenge. And more and more.
There was less emotion to wrangle than there would have been a few days ago. When the city fell, I’d had to make some decisions, choices that had built a hard shell within me. Most of my distractions were already imprisoned there. I left those untouched, where they couldn’t reach me.
When all my remaining emotions and thought-trains were safely enclosed, I shut the box in my heart. My mind was clear, free to focus only on the magic I was about to let enter my body.
With one hand still planted on the counter and the line of liquid foundation connecting my skin to the woman’s photograph, I let my other hand touch the photo’s corner.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
I opened myself to the magic.
KADUMKADUMKADUM
It burst in like a river through a broken dam, surging into my veins. It pounded on the inside of my skin, raising bumps and making my hair rise. I felt myself caught up in a tempest, swirled and spun. Dizziness engulfed me. My balance swayed. Distantly I felt Kendall’s hands brace me, keeping me from toppling over. My eyes felt like needles were boring through them from within my skull.
Magic had become more and more difficult to predict and control. I hadn’t meant to draw in so much, but now it was here, and I had to use it. I sent the magic into the photo of the woman, concentrating with all my strength on her appearance, envisioning every detail in utter clarity. Reshape, I chanted in my mind. Reforge bone. Recast flesh. Remake muscle. Become one with this face, these features, this body.
The words repeated in my mind as I focused the magic on the photo. In my mind the whorls and eddies of magical energy began to take on a form, a woman’s face. KADUMKADUMKADUM, pain burned in my skull, but I held on, concentrating and shaping the magic through the photo until every last detail was correct. I couldn’t allow the slightest fuzziness, the most minute imperfection in the image, or the whole enchantment would be for nothing.
Finally the magic fully embraced the woman’s image. I seized it and channeled the enchantment through the liquid makeup, the water base of the fluid allowing it to handle a great deal of magic, the synthetic elements in the makeup helping reduce the enchantment’s bleed off. Through the channel, the enchantment flowed into my own hand.
Change appearances, I continued to chant as the enchantment took hold. Reforge bone. Recast flesh. Remake ...
Pain split my skin in ten thousand tiny cuts. My face shattered into agony, every bone seeming to splinter. Screams ripped from my ragged throat. I saw white. Everything keeled sideways as I collapsed. My head smacked the hard floor. Muscles went rigid as they were ripped apart.
It seemed to take ages for my agony to stop. When the last shuddering spasm left me, I found myself on my side on the floor, curled in a tight ball. My head was in Kendall’s lap. She held my shoulders, keeping me from convulsing into the walls.
A shuddering breath filled my lungs. Good, I could still breathe. I’d created disguise enchantments before, anchored to jewelry I could easily remove, but this was the first time I’d reshaped my own actual appearance. I hadn’t realized how much it would hurt. “Did it work?” My voice came out ragged.
She swallowed and nodded. “That was ... I’ve never seen magic do that to you before.”
“I’ve had worse.” I managed to sit up, bracing myself on the closed toilet.
“Seriously?”
My hand rose toward the tattoo around my heart. “Yes. Once.”
She didn’t press.
I should stand. I should look at what I’d done to myself. Inspect the disguise to ensure it would fool Geralt and his followers.
But I wasn’t done yet.
I reached up and pulled down the noise-canceling headphones and the oiled rope. “One to go,” I said.
“Are you able to do this right now?”
“The pain is fading,” I said, truthfully. “And a physical disguise is nothing unless I mask my magical power as well. I’m in a good mental place right now. I should finish.”
Silently she let me wrap one end of the rope around the headphones and grip the other in my palm. This enchantment went much more easily than the previous one, probably because it didn’t have to literally break my bones. I kept my thoughts focused, controlling the magic with a firm hand, crafting it into what I needed. Soon I’d placed a second enchantment on my body that should mute the feel of my magical presence, making my power seem a fragment of its true potential. This was an enchantment I’d taught myself shortly after escaping the cult, but one I hadn’t needed to use very often. Other enchanters could only sense my abilities upon touching me, and I’d made a point of avoiding them. Only now was the disguise worth the risk of fleshwriting.
“That one didn’t do much,” Kendall said after I finished.
“Not visibly. It’ll have an effect, though.” I raised my arm to see two enchantment tattoos on my forearm, a small one on my inner wrist, a larger one wrapping the back of my forearm like a bracelet. Both took the form of all enchantment tattoos, a circular pattern formed of a single unbroken line that never crossed itself.
I had done all the preparation I could.
It was time to see if it had worked.
Bracing myself on the toilet lid, I slid my feet under me and managed to stand. The mirror loomed before me, and slowly I lifted my eyes.
A stranger looked back at me.
My nose was too big. I felt it should be blocking more of my vision. I glanced down and suffered a moment of vertigo. The ground looked further away than before. Of course it did, I berated myself. I was three inches taller now, all of it in my legs. Glancing aside, I realized I was almost as tall as Kendall.
My bony frame had been replaced by rounded curves, and my breasts were at least a size larger. I hefted them through my shirt, frowning at my reflection. That would take some getting used to. I inspected every detail of my features, searching for the slightest fuzziness, the smallest mistake that would give away the reshaping as an enchantment. I found none. I’d done the magic perfectly.
One last detail to check. I tugged down the neckline of my shirt and stared at my unmarked skin. For the first time in almost a decade, my chest was free of the enchantment tattoo that had forced me to keep fleeing for my life. Tentatively I let my fingers brush the bare skin. Where normally the pulse of strong magic would resonate, now there was nothing.
I could feel the magic in me, its presence undiminished. But no eye or magical touch could sense it. Only the two tattoos on my arm revealed any sign of magic in my body, and those would draw no notice. All fleshwriters wore at least one tattoo at any given time, and no one would know what mine did unless they took the magic out of me. I had officially changed my identity.
Which meant the rest of the plan could proceed.
I intended to start by recruiting two or three key enchanters, hopefully in positions of power. Once they were on my side, they could start sowing seeds among the others, creating a countermovement within the cult. We’d either gain enough support to stage a coup and overthrow Geralt from within, or I’d recruit enough followers that we could bail on the cult and fix magic on our own.
“Remember,” I told Kendall, “you have to move out of here as soon as I go in. And everyone in the Underground needs to change their contact information. If the fleshwriters figure out I’m a spy, they’ll try to get information out of me. Phone numbers, addresses, battle strategies, everything needs to change so I don’t have any tactical data to use. Even if they figure out who I truly am, I won’t be able to bring the rest of you down with me. The Underground can keep fighting back, even if this all goes sideways.”
