Blood in the Water (2 page)

Supposedly, the Warp magic is
inside every single human on the planet. Anyone can be woken at any
minute, a ‘holy’ duty thrust upon them with no warning. Without any
convenient sign or dramatic music signaling that it’s happened.
Just some people who
might
be crazy trying to awkwardly explain that you’re
needed to save the world.

The way the professors talk about
it, you’d think the Warp was God, or at least a sentient,
all-powerful sort of thing. Choosing champions from the populace to
protect the walls between realities. But from what I’ve seen, it
chooses rather strangely. We certainly don’t look very heroic. Most
of us are in our teens, but there are stories about old people and
even children being given power for short periods of time, in great
emergencies. Those people don’t get to keep their power for long;
as soon as the emergency is over, they forget about it entirely.
And even people who are ‘chosen’ usually fade out and lose their
gifts by their late twenties. I guess middle-aged people aren’t
that handy in the war against chaos. So I’m probably in it for the
long haul; I might be
thirty
by the time I stop acting like a magical Geiger
counter and magnet. I’ll be stuck with this lot for the next
fifteen years. Until then, our job is to prevent the different
dimensions from bleeding into one another until everything is dark
and destroyed.

No problem.

A student who hums with barely contained
energy sighs loudly enough to get my attention, presumably at the
professor’s words, and slumps back into her padded seat at the
woman’s reminder that she is never going to compete in the
Olympics. The lecturer raises a pointed eyebrow and looks sternly
over her half-moon glasses for a long moment before
continuing.

“Some of you were chosen for your intellect
and strength of mind, and have therefore been touched with esoteric
magics. You will be trained as warlocks, taught to use spells to
help your companions against the encroaching darkness. You will
develop your skills until we find the elements in which you excel,
and then you will be put to work researching as well as taking the
fight to the field itself. Leave the right path—the choice to
protect your species—and you will be rewarded by slipping into
idiocy, and become gibbering, drooling wrecks. The magics that mark
you are unassailable. They give you the ability to change the
world, but should you falter, they will strip you of everything
that made you special. You will march at your companions’ sides
until you are unable to do so. Don’t be so arrogant as to believe
that for you, there may be a different route. Your spells and
potions are nothing compared to the raw power of the
Warp.”

The warlocks in the room, three female and two
male, are identifiable by the thick archaic volumes—carried
everywhere at all times—balanced on the corners of the tiny desks
they’re squashed behind. They all look exceptionally
studious.

Isn’t a warlock a bloke?
I guess the Protectorate is pro gender-neutral
terms,
I observe with an inner
snigger.
Like Americans saying ‘server’
instead of ‘waitress’ and ‘waiter,’ now. Funny.

I perk up as the professor moves on to the
last kind of student at the Protectorate. Weavers. Me.

“And finally, the weavers, with the ability to
shut the doors between our world and others. Your responsibility is
great; without you the veils between dimensions would tear open
irreparably, and allow Earth to be overrun. Not even the warriors
and warlocks could stand against the hells that would be unleashed,
should you fail in your duty. While some dimensions pose no threat
to us, others try to open doorways big enough for an invasion.
Without you, the demon armies could march, unchecked, across our
world. Billions would die screaming, and others would live only as
slaves. Our land would be a blackened wreck, empty and void of
life.”

Does she have to be this
dramatic?
I idly rub my thumb across the
four black and red tattoos marking the inside of my wrist—one for
each dimensional tear to which I’ve been exposed, and subsequently
closed. As soon as I’m in range, the tattoos start coalescing—black
marks where magic is being pulled through my skin by a rift
opening, and then words I can’t read, forming faint on my flesh.
Once I’ve closed the breach, I get a red seal around the edges,
which means the door is shut, and the stitch is complete. The red
outlines the black marks like fineliner around watercolours. When a
mark—‘stitch’—is sealed, it means the weaver has a sort of bond
with that particular dimension, and can open the doorway again.
Intentionally.

That might seem weird,
wanting
to open a
dimensional doorway, but sometimes it’s the only way to gain an
advantage. If there’s a big pitched battle, for example—some demons
trying to get through a large opening—sending troops around to
flank them might be our best chance to push them back. If that
happens, it takes a weaver with a full stitch to manipulate the
Warp, open a tear, and push the troops through.

All of my stitches are closed now, so I can
force rifts to those four dimensions. I check the marks all the
time, just in case something has changed. The stitches contain the
magic—they’re how I channel the energy of the Warp—but the human
body isn’t made to withstand magic burning through it. Things can
go wrong; the power can escape and burn you up. They tell me that
unsealed stitches are more likely to burst, letting the magic out,
and that’s reason enough for me to want every single one
closed.

I clench my fist. My first stitch is a little
darker than the others, because I’ve been close to that particular
dimension three times now. Every time I’m near a breach on the same
frequency, the stitch will blacken further, whether or not it’s
closed. Older weavers have tattoos so dark they look like pieces of
coal framed in blood. The seal—closing the tear, and therefore the
stitch—gives you more time before the magic escapes. But if I’m
exposed to too many breaches on the same frequency, or all at once,
the stitches will burst open, flooding my body with magic. My blood
will change to acid, and burn me from the inside out.

I’ve seen a picture of a weaver fraying.
That’s what they call it when the tattoos spread out too far. It’s
as though the marks somehow trap the different frequencies of magic
inside you, keeping them organized so you can follow each thread to
its home dimension. But if they touch each other, they set off a
chain reaction. In the picture, the boy was screaming and his hands
were jet black. Not a natural kind of black—a lightless void. It
was blossoming up his arms like it was sucking the life out of
him.

I shiver. Every time I’ve been near a breach
so far, I’ve been with a senior weaver—someone who could ensure
that I didn’t make a mistake. I’m a little intimidated by the idea
of being out on my own, which could happen any day now.

Suddenly the professor moves on to
a topic that interests me. “And as for water breaches...” I perk
up.
Would demons who came through water
breaches be mermaids? I totally want to meet mermaids. But if a
breach opens under water, would the water all drain through into a
different dimension, like a giant, mystical plughole? Is there a
department to make sure that doesn’t happen? The Department of
Interdimensional Water Levels. Hey, that could explain the rising
oceans; maybe the ‘global warming is a hoax’ people know something
we don’t and really we’re just getting shafted by some poxy
dimension dropping all its water onto us!

I’d be more likely to believe that if science
didn’t show that the ice caps are actually melting. Something to
think about, though. Maybe we could drain some water to help with
the inevitable flooding.

Sadly, the mention of water breaches is not
accompanied by answers to my questions; it’s just a brief reminder
that openings can and do happen anywhere. I sigh as the
tufty-haired professor starts droning on and on about the dangers
of letting even one demon run amok through London’s oblivious
population.

Jeez, woman. Obviously letting
monsters go and kill people is a terrible idea, especially if it’s
a proper bad guy—a spy for one of the warlike clans or something.
Honestly, are the students you get here mostly idiots?
My eyes light on a warlock boy in front of me,
who is leaning over and diligently writing in his notepad.
Are you seriously taking
notes
? You need to write this down
so you don’t forget? I bet you have your name sewn into your
undies, too.

Bemused, I crinkle my nose and
click the power button on my phone to check the time. Forty minutes
left.
Ugh.
I roll
my eyes and resist the urge to head-butt the desk. Barely. Ever
since I arrived at the Protectorate’s London campus a month ago,
I’ve felt strongly that the curriculum needs a revamp. Shouldn’t
learning about demons and magic and ancient wars be fun? It is
absolutely beyond me how anyone could make this stuff boring. Math
is more fun than this!
Math
.

When I’d found out I was joining an ancient
sect that was sworn to protect humanity against monsters, I thought
it would be much more exciting. But it’s all transpired to be
horribly like regular school: dates and species and facts to
remember, mixed with military training, which is like PE, but
worse. Angrier instructors. At least shooting guns is kind of
satisfying, in a slightly scary way. I get to do that, though I
don’t have a lot of physical training. The warriors have a much
heavier focus on martial arts and weaponry, while the warlocks have
even more studying to do, as they memorize reams of spells and
ingredients. On top of the classes we all share—history, geography,
physics, and math, mostly—I’m required to do focus activities, such
as the ever-fascinating ‘music note identification class.’
Something to do with dimensions having a certain ‘sound,’ and
learning to tell the difference between them quickly.
Bo-ring.

I consider for a moment whether I’m likely to
get caught if I play a game on my phone, and wonder what the
punishment could be, but decide against it on the grounds that the
last time I got busted not paying attention, I had to take care of
the compost. I smelled like moldy bread and tea leaves for a
week.

Instead, I start doodling tiny dinosaurs on
the pristine sheet of paper waiting for my notes. An ice skating
brontosaurus kills the better part of five minutes.

Then movement to my right catches my
attention. Cam, my stocky best friend at the Protectorate, pushes a
wisp of long, ashy blonde hair behind her ear and slides a scrap of
paper across to my desk in a single movement, almost too fast for
the eye to track.

Flipping warriors, always showing
off. Just ‘cause they’re faster and stronger, have better reactions
and incredible balance…
Though I guess
that comes in handy for the ‘fighting giant demonic creatures who
want to enslave the human race’ thing.

The silent grumble is affectionate, and I
cover the note with my hand, slipping it onto my lap to avoid being
noticed. It’s pretty easy to get caught messing around in class, as
there are only sixteen people taking this course. Orientation, they
call it officially. Newbie Torture, according to everyone
else.

I look down to see that Cam has written ‘Wanna
play hooky?’ in large, childish letters. I snort and nod in reply,
not as subtly as I should have.

“Something to add, Hallisandra?”

It’s Hallie!
I cringe at the sound of my full name, and make a face before
I reply. “No, Ms. Llewellyn, just agreeing with your point.”
Please don’t ask what the point was, please don’t
ask what the point was...

“And what point was that,
precisely?” The professor doesn’t sound convinced that I have an
answer, and I open my mouth, glancing futilely at the blank
board.
If you actually turned the
computer
on
,
maybe I’d know!

Beside me, Cam’s huge shoulders
are shaking with suppressed laughter, and I glare at her before
venturing a response. “About our
responsibility
and what it means to
be part of this great organization!” I fill my voice with as much
awe and excitement as I can. Responsibility is usually a safe bet
in this class.

Llewellyn flattens her wild hair with a palm,
staring daggers at me as though waiting for me to fold. I blink,
doe-eyed, and finally the woman turns away, returning to the smart
board and actually noticing it’s blank. Her face pinkens as she
clicks the power button and scrolls through some text-heavy slides
before pulling an image onto it—a faded map of London, marked with
orange streaks and swirls. It looks like a weather map.

“Human cities are always hot spots for
interdimensional flux, and as you can see, there are certain points
that draw more breaches than others. Large gatherings—situations
where emotions are high. You have to remember that every single
human on the planet is imbued with some level of magic. Most of
them will never realize it, though a few will be woken and join us
here. But when the general population is crowded together, the
magic in their blood can call breaches by accident. Some people,
especially weavers, have a propensity to act as focal points, which
is why it’s imperative that they learn their craft quickly and
efficiently.”