"Proud product of the City of Sin, me darlin'," I said, accepting a brew.

"Let's get going. It's nearly three, and I've got an exam tomorrow."

We gathered our things for the trek back to campus. Jules and I trudged through the moist multicolor leaves that carpeted the ground. Growing up in a desert, I didn't think much of the seasons. It got a bit cooler, then it got a bit warmer, but not so much as a leaf changed. East Coast seasons were another story. They went all out. Full costume changes and whatnot. No expense was spared. So far I had watched the dark greens of summer transition to the reds, yellows, and browns of fall. Soon, I would get to see my first snowstorm.

Sleeping Giant forest was a truly beautiful place, so beautiful that it had been designated a state park. The craggily mountain that the park was named after loomed off in the distance. Dante said you could climb to the top of it and see for miles. (I'd never done so. Jules made good and sure any free time I had was spent training.) Sleeping Giant forest was also a great place to practice magic. No camping was allowed, and all the normal visitors had to leave the parking lots by dusk. From then on, Elliot students had the few square miles of forest all to themselves. There were practice facilities all over the place, but I'd only visited the Woodworks.

I paused for a moment, my shoulders sagging. We'd been doing this c.r.a.p for three months...

"You know, Jules, I don't think I'm cut out for this kind of work."

Jules giggled. "What a remarkable conclusion, professor. Of course yer not. That's the point. Without addressing yer weaknesses, yer never goin' ta get anywhere."

"And after we get this volume issue under control?"

"Then I can finally get some work done! Greggs is up my a.r.s.e about this rose fusion bit as it be."

My frown deepened. Jules was right. I wasn't the only one suffering. Training me was eating up all of Jules' time too.

She gave me a playful shove. "I just be jesting, ya thicko. I ain't plannin' on breakin' up our little coven. After we fix the volume thing, we start refinin' yer craft. You know, expand on what yer good at."

"Says the adept to the initiate."

"Hey now, Dieter, don't be that way. It takes me about a minute to set up an extraction-and I've been trainin' since I was a toddler. You waltzed onto campus and turned Central's bas.e.m.e.nt into a sugary ocean on yer very first try."

I pulled off my wool cap and mussed up my hair. "What can I say? Me mongo. Me smash."

"Na, that be a sack-a-bull, Dieter. You may not be able to control yer quant.i.ties yet, but yer executin' an extraction every darn time. That's more consistent than that Tiger Woods be at free throws."

I cringed. Sports weren't Jules Nelson's strong suit.

"Thanks for the encouragement, Jules, but I..." That was strange...I looked left and right. "Hey, Jules? Do you feel something funny?"

Jules stopped walking and listened. We were at the fringe of the forest looking across the lawns at the school dorms, but the once familiar s.p.a.ce felt...off. The flows of mana are part of the natural landscape. You'd notice if I were to remove a tree from out front of your house. The same goes for mana. Jules and I knew this forest well. We walked it every night. I could sense the magical fortifications and counter-hexes as they drew power from the leyline (didn't know what they did, mind you, but I could sense them). I could feel the rumbling leyline as it rolled through the bedrock just beneath my feet. And I could notice when something was altered. Right now, it felt like someone had rearranged the deck chairs on our front porch.

A branch cracked, and an owl fluttered off into the night. Grabbing my shoulder, Jules dropped us both into a crouch. Good rule of thumb: if the animals spook, so should you.

"Feach," Jules whispered. She pointed into the mist ahead of us.

The hair rose on the back of my neck. Jules rarely slid back into Gaelic. I strained my eyes against the light sheet of fog. Failing at that, I threw more energy into my Sight at the expense of my hearing and smell. I let out a steamy breath. There where five darkened figures hustling away from IKM. They were dressed entirely in black-and were heavily armed.

"What the h.e.l.l?" I whispered.

"Something's not right," Jules whispered back. "They don't look like students."

No s.h.i.t, Sherlock.

"That, or we're going to have to give Maria a hard time for not scoring us some grenades and body armor."

The five men hustling across the lawn collected around a sixth. He wore a dark black robe, and I could sense the magic on him. He was working an incantation. As we watched in silence, a slit appeared in the air in front of him.

"A translocation?" Jules whispered. "Translocation magic isn't supposta be possible inside Elliot's gates. A ton of counters are c.o.c.ked'n ready. That's why Maria's paella-portation failed. You should have seen it, Dieter. The neddy nearly lost her arm for her troubles."

I had never seen a translocation before, but whatever the mage was casting was consuming some serious energy. No wonder we had sensed it. The slit in the air quivered. The ethereal blue edges began to peel apart-but the air seemed resistant to the effort. The mage poured forth even more mana from the leyline. He was dousing the incantation with a fire hose, but even then, the slit only peeled open slightly. Cursing, the mage grasped at something around his neck. For a single instant the blue light emanating from the gate flashed across the ruby red pendant.

"ACT," I said in shock. "Jules, that son of a b.i.t.c.h has an ACT device."

"How the h.e.l.l do ya know about artificial conduits?" Jules exclaimed. "I haven't even covered that topic in Advanced Countermeasures." Her eyes narrowed. "Are ya hidin' books from me?"

"The tall man, Jules. The mage Rei killed in New York. That dude had one."

Jules' eyes widened. "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, Dieter. Are ya sayin' these are the people behind Lucas' death?"

"Bingo."

Jules ran a shaking hand through her tangled blond frizz. Taking her pack off, she fished out the small red book ent.i.tled: In Case of Emergencies. My own heart was beating in the high double digits. I had been so buried in my studies that I hadn't spent much time pondering the goings on of the outside world. Sure, oodles of rumors had been floating around; I just figured that they were about as reliable as the ones going around about Rei and me. But as Jules and I crouched in the leaves, I deeply regretted not at least reading the Conscious papers...

I shook my head clear. This was no time for mulling over regrets. The blue gap was growing wider. Despite the invisible opposition of Elliot's wards, the mage was making progress.

As Jules shuffled through the pages, a sudden energy rebound issued from the gate. With a crackle, the portal snapped closed, and the mage landed on his a.s.s. I smirked. The wards surrounding the campus had given the mage a love tap. From their gestures, I could tell his compatriots were none too pleased. One of the five was yelling something while pointing at his watch. It didn't sound like he was speaking English.

What was the rush? I wondered. The man pointing at his watch looked different from the others. He had a much smaller weapon, and he was carrying two bulky satchels...

"Oh," I muttered. Panic crackled through my bones. I grabbed Jules by the shoulders. She was still struggling to read the manual in the dark. "Jules, listen to me. You need to do one thing and one thing only: You need to run as fast as you can, get to IKM, and pull the fire alarm. We need to get everyone the h.e.l.l away from the dorms."

Jules glanced at the man wearing the satchels. Realization dawned across her face. "Awen's Ghost," she muttered. "Those are just like the ones the Provos used ta use. But, Dieter, how are ya gonna-"

"Don't worry about that. There isn't time. I'll set up the diversion. You'll know it."

I didn't give her any time to argue. Jules tended to think too much. I ran off through the tree line moving at an angle from the group of men. To be honest, I was scared s.h.i.tless. I hated guns. Guns shot bullets, and I hated bullets even more than I hated guns. But I needed to give Jules a window. She had to get our cla.s.smates out of the building. We probably still had some time. In my last encounter with these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, they seemed really concerned with secrecy. Why else would they have wiped the tall man's mind of any information that could lead DOMA back to them? These guys were pros. They would have added some cushion into their calculations, enough time for them to escape without a trace. I prayed I was right. Otherwise, I had just sent Jules to her death.

I kept glancing across the field as I ran. The gunmen were urging the mage to hurry up and try again. "Keep him distracted, fellas," I whispered to myself. "Buy me some time." The men were shooting themselves in the foot. You can't rush magic. It's like yelling at a guy who's trying to sink a putt.

I wanted to stay well back behind the tree line, but I figured I needed to get within fifty yards. I couldn't trust my accuracy beyond that point. Thankfully there was a light breeze. The rustling leaves and thickening fog helped mask my footfalls. My heart was racing. My last encounter with a mage using an artificial conduit had left both my hands covered in third-degree burns. I was going to have to manage better than that. More importantly, I needed that image out of my head before I started casting.

I crawled the last ten yards through the brush. I did it as quietly as I could manage. (I didn't have any desire to attract the attention of five AK-forty-somethings.) Reaching my range, I brushed away the matted leaves and smoothed out the dirt. With a shaky finger I drew three circles touching at three points. It was time to show Jules what I had learned.

I closed my eyes. I struggled to clear my mind, but the memory of my scorched hands interfered with my focus. I grimaced. Time was running out. No one would be alerted until Jules could set off the fire alarms, and Jules wasn't going anywhere if I couldn't distract them. I cursed. The image of my scorched hands wouldn't go away. My adrenalin, mixed with the prospects of facing another ACT wielding mage, was causing too much interference. I couldn't clear my head. The need for focus cut both ways. My opponent was getting distracted by his squadmates; I was getting distracted by my demons.

Wait a minute, I thought to myself. Why was I trying to suppress the flashback? I could work with it. I did the mental calculus in my head. I'd never tried a spell like this one before, but there was no reason I couldn't use magic like it was a chemistry set, right? I built up the extraction fields one at a time. I rushed the job, sloshing mana into them with reckless abandon. I could afford to be sloppy. Causing a mess was the whole point.

The three circles charged, I turned to the trans.m.u.tations. Trans.m.u.tations are formed using mental images. The images must be vivid. The more senses you draw on the better. In Magic Theory I, Professor Greenberg recommended choosing three distinct images that shared the desired trait. That way, distinct aspects of each individual memory wouldn't interfere with the desired effect. I chose carefully. For the first point, I thought back to the dry air of my home, the slow wheeze of gas as the tube fed my lungs in the hospital, and the first gasping breath I drew after nearly drowning with Sadie. For the second point, I thought of the smell of auto repair shops, my failed attempts to fix an old dirt bike, and the time I was siphoning fuel and it squirted straight into my mouth. For the third point, I thought of cheap coffee cups, the excitement of opening a package, and the mess Victor's dog made when he tore through his bedding.

Done, I crept away from my work. Like a tree house made by an eight year old, my casts were totally unstable. I didn't dare breathe on them. Fortunately, all that was left was to prime the reaction. I turned my attention to the darkness at the center of the cascade. I thought of my hands griping the pipe. The swing. The shock. I thought of my flesh instantly charred through. I let the panic rush over me. The smell of burning flesh returned to my nostrils. The horrendous waves of heat-stoked pain raked my veins. With a grunt, I pushed it all into the final cast.

The formulation quivered, the components teetering like dominos. Only the slightest nudge and the spell would go off. I was sweating from exhaustion. The strain from the seven casts was taking its toll. I flipped up the hood of my robe, tucked my hands into its long sleeves, and took in three deep breaths. What I was about to set off was extremely dangerous. It might even kill some of the men. But anything less risked Jules' safety. She would be running across open ground-and the men had machine guns. They couldn't be allowed to open fire.

My hands shook from the adrenalin. This was the first time I'd ever faced a decision like this. I stared past the men to IKM. About forty friends and neighbors were about to die in an explosion. It was an easy call. I gave my cascade a nudge-and I ran like h.e.l.l.

I could feel the air begin to suck inward as sprinted, and I strained to pick up my pace. One of the men shouted, and a round zipped past my ear. My bladder tried to empty. I looked back to see three of them running in my direction. Flashes were bursting from their muzzles, but that was fine with me. Those were three fewer guns trained at Jules. She was going to have a chance; I just hoped she didn't freeze up.

I first realized I'd used too much mana when I noticed I was flying through the air. That clack and roar arrived later, as I slid through a sloppy pile of leaves. I curled up into a ball, cowering under my heavy robe. They said the robes were fire r.e.t.a.r.dant; I was about to put that claim to the test. I turned to face the men. Instead, I found an inferno. The trees where I once stood were fully engulfed. All around me, small fires were erupting. The gunmen were in chaos. Screams filled the air. Two men were on fire. The first was trying to get his shirt off, his arms coated in a flaming gel. The second was fully engulfed. He tried to stop, drop, and roll.

It won't help, I thought guiltily. Napalm doesn't work that way.

The mage in black wasn't faring any better. Distracted mid-cast, his translocation had malfunctioned. Some property of the half-opened portal had been altered. Rebounding casts could be nasty; Jules had warned me about that. The severity of the rebound depended on the amount of mana you spent. Tearing into s.p.a.ce had required a ton of energy, energy that very much didn't want to be compressed. Question was, what would happen now that it'd been freed?

Staying low in the leaves, I focused my Sight. The gate's borders were vibrating with unstable energies, but a ma.s.sive flow of mana continued to conduit through the mage into the gate. My mysterious adversary was struggling against some unseen force, one that was contracting the s.p.a.ce between him and the gate. The mage dug his heels into the ground. He seemed very disinclined to let the blue fringes of the gate touch him. But why was he being drawn toward the gate in the first place? I had never read about anything like that before. Miscasts tended to cut manaflows; they didn't normally increase them. Plus, no one else was affected. Only the mage was getting pulled in.

A red shimmer caught my eye.

The ACT device!

The ACT device was pulling him by the neck. It was dragging him towards the gate like a high-powered magnet. But why? I knew next to nothing about how artificial conduits worked. Since that conversation between Rei and Albright, I'd only heard whispers. I lay in the leaves, transfixed by the scene. Of the three men who were chasing me, two were burning, and one was struggling to his feet, dazed. Another two stood next the gate and argued about what to do about the mage. They seemed very disinclined to touch him. I looked in the direction of where Jules was lying in wait. I couldn't see her. She must have made her move...at least there was that.

The mage in black cried out in frustration. He was losing his battle with the gate. I wondered what would happen when his flesh touched the angry blue vibrations.

Three more feet and I'd find out.

I shook my head. I had caused this fiery nightmare. Two men might already be dead. A third was being dragged to his death. I was shocked by how easy it had been. I had the trap up in less than thirty seconds-and using only my hands. Roaches vs. Raid. They hadn't even seen it coming. The lopsided odds made me feel a bit dirty. Shouldn't I have given them a fairer shake?

A tree, fully engulfed, crashed to the ground. What an incredible amount of power. Through my disgust, past my shock, I found that part of me wanted to keep watching. This was my creation-the embodiment of all my fears and doubts turned back against my enemies. My mouth was watering. My heart was racing. I swallowed. Watching this terrible scene unfold was...stars above...it was making me excited.

A little part of my brain told me that there were important things to attend to. People were in danger. My people. I needed to help evacuate the dorms, I needed to help protect my friends-but those concerns seemed rather trivial. Something vastly more important was unfolding right in front of me. These three months of training had been so dull. So empty. They had lulled me to sleep. I had stopped paying attention to that fuzz gnawing at the back of my skull, that little voice that told me I was off course. That I had somehow lost my way...

With one last s.n.a.t.c.h at the gra.s.s, the mage in black smacked into the vibrating wall.

He screamed in anguish; I sighed with relief.

When I was a little boy, I knew this kid named Frank. Frank liked to kill bugs. Frank liked killing bugs so much that he spent whole mornings on his belly with his boy scout issue emergency magnifying gla.s.s burning ant after ant into oblivion. He said if you listened hard enough, you could even hear them scream.

One day I was playing at Frank's house. We goofed around in the pool, ate lunch, and watched some TV. Even then I hated TV. TV gave me headaches. TV burned my eyes. So I was relieved when Frank got bored and flicked off the migraine box. He bounced off the couch and said he had an idea.

One other thing about Frank: Frank had a computer. He was the only one of my friends that did. And so when he said he wanted to show me a website, I got really excited. I never got to surf the web; I really wanted to give it a try. The site in question was dedicated to pictures of dead bodies. You clicked on each link, and a photo loaded slowly from top to bottom. The delay gave you time to antic.i.p.ate the horror as it crawled across the screen. I knew we were doing something sorta bad by visiting it, but I told myself that no one was getting hurt. After all, we weren't doing anything. We were just looking.

Frank took me through the photos one-by-one. He paused on the ones he liked. Offered commentary. There were mutilated people, shot people, stabbed people, burnt people, and suicides galore. There was even a video of a monk setting himself on fire. Poured gasoline right on his freakin' head and everything.

On and on they went. Looking at all the strange scenes made me feel funny. They didn't look real. They looked like big practical jokes. Still, seeing so many of them made me feel queasy. I kinda wanted to leave, but I didn't want to be uncool. What if Frank told everyone I chickened out? Even at that age, I knew I couldn't let that happen. So I stuck it out. I looked at every photo. Laughed when Frank laughed. Smiled when Frank smiled. Still, when Frank said we had arrived at the last photo, I felt relieved. Looking at the pictures made me feel sorta tired.

Frank said that the last photo was his favorite. That he liked saving it for last. It was t.i.tled, "Man Run Over by Tank," but as the picture loaded, I frowned. The image didn't make sense. It looked like a photo of a big fat dog-log someone had stepped in. The features didn't register. It was all just mush...and then I found the eyes. My brain did the rest. Features clicked into place. The skin, the cheeks, the bones, the lips...they were all there if you looked for them. It struck me like a sledgehammer. This paste had once been a man-a living breathing man-and now he was nothing but a pair of eyes looking up at me through a pile of goo. I gagged. It was a total mockery of the human form. Bones lay twisted and broken. Innards squirted about like jelly. A mockery of life.

I could hear my heart pounding off the inside of my skull. Sweat beaded on my skin. Overwhelmed, I did the only thing I could do. I ran. I ran out of the room. I ran down the stairs. I ran straight out the door. I sprinted block after block in a daze. I don't even recall breathing. Home, I hid under my blankets for hours. No matter what I did, that puddle of a man refused to leave. He hid under my eyelids and visited my dreams. I pictured friends crushed just like him. My father. Santa Claus. The President. That life was that fragile-that my life was that fragile-it shattered me. I never talked to Frank again. I turned straight around every time I saw him. I couldn't forgot how he sat there smiling as I ran from the room.

There's actually a term for what I saw. It's called getting pulped. And as the mage in black struck that malfunctioning gate, I watched a man get pulped before my eyes. He went feet first. It gave him plenty of time to scream. In a matter of seconds, the gate had chewed through his feet, carved up his calves, and ground through his knees. A puddle of steaming human goop gathered below. The vibrating orifice's inner workings groaned in protest. It was as though his body was gumming up the works. The entire process slowed. Like putting too much paper in a shredder. To my horror, I was forced to suppress a giggle. The mage's screams ended. Crimson streams of blood leaked from his mouth and nose. I glanced down at his guts. The gate was processing them into a cloud of steam and sludge. The mage's arms shuddered and went limp. His eye sockets oozed a grayish jelly. The gate had crunched halfway through his chest, the mage was dead ten times over, but still the mana continued to flow. It didn't stop until the pendant finished its grim procession to the gate. The conduit shattered the instant the two met. The gate imploded, and with a pop and a fizz, the red jewel burst into flames. What was left of the mage's torso splattered into the puddle of flesh below.

In the quiet that followed, I watched stray muscle fibers twitch about on the ground. The remains looked like an oversized chunk of meat roasting in a stew. One of two men left standing started screaming. (Watching your escape plan turn into steaming barbacoa can be a bit taxing on the average thug.) A rush of pleasure shot through me. I let out a tiny gasp.

Clearly, something was amiss. My rational brain was telling me this reaction wasn't normal. I should have been screaming my head off too. So why was I getting aroused? Had I fowled up my cast? Jules had warned me about something called mental contamination. It was a side effect of psych-spells. Psych-spells were risky. They could cause unantic.i.p.ated feedback into the caster's mind. In especially bad cases, the feedback could cause psychotic breaks. Heck, just last week, a forth year from Mu studying for his WIP practical was committed for a few days after one of his spells backfired. His group members found him in a hall closet. He'd been working his way through the wall with his fingernails. But I hadn't been messing around with that kind of magic. Psych-spells were a highly advanced cla.s.s of magic. I didn't understand the nature of such spells, let alone how to set them up. Yet here I was, lying in the leaves, going giddy when I should have been gagging.

I was running through my spell again-trying to think of where I might have erred-when I heard the crinkling of leaves behind me. I froze. I'd missed one of the men. He had me dead to rights. I braced, waiting for the bullet.

"Dieter, perhaps you should consider moving. The leaves are ablaze," Rei noted casually.

I sniffed at the air and coughed. Rei was right. Smoke was billowing up around me. Jumping to my feet, I brushed off the smoldering leaves. If I had not been wearing my Elliot robe, I would have probably gone up in flames. "Thanks," I managed.

Her own robe hanging loosely, Rei was busy pulling her long black hair into a pony. She gestured to what was left of the mage. "The man-pudding over there, was he wearing an ACT device?"

I managed a raspy, "Yes," before I near spit up my lungs. My throat was bone dry. I hadn't realized it, but I'd been sucking down a lot of smoke. "Jules and I...we...we were coming back from training."

Rei tapped her finger against her chin. "Ah, yes, that tiny Druid was a.s.signed as your keeper, was she not? She is to ensure that you do not drown the school in high-fructose corn syrup."

I frowned. That legend just wouldn't die.

"Would you still be Ms. Mockenstein if I could do blood?"

"Blood?" Rei raised an eyebrow. From the few times I had seen her since Jules commandeered my life, I had learned that people generally handled Rei Bathory in one of two ways: by A) cowering or B) leering. I guess I spoke to her more casually than anyone else. "Ah! Like in that most excellent Stanley Kubrick feature, The Shining, I believe it was called." Rei sighed. "A girl can dream. Did you know that the English term 'bloodbath' was inspired by a Bathory?" Another thing about Rei: it was really hard to tell when she was joking.

We turned our attention back to the gunmen. In a fit of terror, one of the masked men had accidently stepped into a pile of napalm. He was struggling to get his pants off before the rising flames made their way through his boots.

"That one won't be getting far," Rei commented. "Then there is Mr. Pudding, a third whom is burnt to death, and a forth unconscious from his wounds." Rei frowned. "Goodness. All these fires makes therming most difficult." She sniffed the air. Squinted. "Only two remain."

I rubbed at my scared palms. It was like Rei was ticking off items on a grocery list.

"My most lethal acquaintance, I am not one to judge, but I am most curious: what did these masked men do to incur your wrath?"

I was about to ask Rei how she had even found me when IKM's fire alarm sounded in the distance. Jules must have succeeded. The alarm snapped me back into focus. "We spotted these guys running from IKM. Mr. Pudding, as you so nicely described him, was working on a translocation spell."

"That is an impossibility," Rei said with certainty. "If the Department's defenses were so weak, they would have been overcome long ago."

"That's what Jules said too, but the proof is Mr. Pudding. I distracted him while he was forming some sort of slit in the air-that's the result. Anyway, one of the other men kept checking his watch and telling Mr. Pudding to hurry up with the spell. I a.s.sumed that we were dealing with a bomb. I told Jules to pull the fire alarm while I created a diversion."

Rei stroked her chin and scanned the scene. A hundred different blazes reflected off the lines of her face. Half the lawn was covered with smoldering globs of napalm. The forest was starting to go up in earnest. Three men lay dead or dying. A fourth (sans pants) was crawling away from the flames. The two who could still stand were making a run for it.

"Dieter, you do not paint with a fine brush," she said quietly.

I ignored her. My attention remained on the two men darting into the woods. They had tried to kill my friends, and I wanted nothing more right now to chase the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds down. "Complain about my arts and crafts later, Rei. The last two are getting away." I couldn't wait for the looks on their faces when I- Rei placed her hand gently upon my shoulder. Her touch sent tingles down my spine. She c.o.c.ked her head and smiled, her ivory teeth glistening in the flames. "Getting away?" she said with a laugh. "Hardly. I shall mop up here. Go fetch Albright, he'll know what to do. Besides..." Rei pouted, her tiny fangs protruding over her lower lip. "You already hogged all the fun."

I watched the two men as they disappeared into the woods.

"My first fresh game in months...it is only fair to give them a thirty second head start," she explained. "Say what they will about you, Dieter, but you are proving most entertaining."

My jaw tightened. Fun? She thought this was fun? And more importantly-what were people saying about me? Did I have bad breath or something? I shook my head. Time was wasting. I clutched the cold hand on my shoulder and stared into Rei's cold blue eyes.

"Fine. Just don't get dead, okay?"

Rei batted her lashes and cupped her cheek with her hand.

"Okie-dokie, Dieter. I'll try to not let the bad men get me."