Gatecrash

DOUG BEYER GATECRASH The Secretist, Part Two

A WANTED MIND

Jace felt like a stringless marionette, heavy-limbed and uncoordinated, splayed out on damp stone deep under street level. The chamber around him, a high-ceilinged and cavelike space hidden down in the forgotten levels under Ravnica’s Tenth District, echoed his quick, wheezing breaths. Jace had never thought of his life measured as a certain number of breaths before, but it struck him that that number was finite.

Emmara stood nearby, and though her healer’s magic was practiced, every part of his body told him he still shouldn’t move. He felt nothing but a unanimous ache, the kind of pain only the club of a Golgari troll could confer. The tissues were still knitting, fiber by fiber. His muscles felt like mashed pulp.

And then there was the problem of the Dimir vampire who had come to kill them. Mirko Vosk had chosen the perfect moment to appear out of the shadows; the marauding troll had fled, leaving Jace weakened; and Emmara had dismissed the massive elemental she had summoned. Vosk’s muscles were taut, like carvings in cold, dense marble, and yet his movements seemed incredibly light. His feet barely glanced against the ground as he strode forward—as if gravity was optional for him.

“My master only values what you have in your minds, mortals,” said Mirko Vosk. “So your bodies need not be intact for what’s about to happen to you.”

Jace lurched to his feet, wobbly as a calf. He felt something tear in his ribcage, and he winced. He knew he looked far from intimidating, and he knew the interloper would not take him for a threat. Still, Jace mustered all the menace he could. He drew himself up and assumed a battle stance.

“Touch her, and I’ll kill you,” he said.

Vosk grinned, flashing his fangs. He moved with unnatural speed, slamming into Emmara before Jace could react, sending her skidding across the chamber. She slid to a halt against the wall, crumpled and not moving. He turned to Jace.

Jace put up a hand and tried to muster a spell to incapacitate Vosk, but the effort was weak, and Vosk evaporated Jace’s halfhearted magic with a dismissive gesture.

Vosk did not spend words gloating. He grabbed Jace by the shoulders, swiveled him around with vampiric strength, and bit into the nape of Jace’s neck. Twin needles drove right through the base of his skull. Jace could feel more than pain, more than the awful sensation of his blood forcefully exiting his body. He felt an invasive stab into his thoughts, a probing hunger that groped around the inside of his skull.

Jace struggled and flailed, trying to land an elbow or kick an ankle, but Mirko Vosk held him fast as he made his psychic attack. Jace could feel the mental intrusion, like an insidious, predatory version of one of his own mind-reading spells. He had the sense that the vampire was sampling his memories, tasting them one by one as he fed.

Jace craned his neck, his arms pinned. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Emmara, but she wasn’t moving—unconscious, or worse. Jace would have to fend off the vampire himself, but he was outmatched in both speed and strength.

Jace needed mana in order to forge any kind of offense. He reached for his deepest bonds, those connections to distant planes whose lands flowed with mana, but the magical energy only trickled into him, replenishing drop by drop. His blood was being drained out of him far faster than the mana was filling him.

These are my last breaths, he thought.

But without warning, the vampire snarled and released him, sliding his fangs out of Jace’s neck. As the two parted, their mental contact broke. Vosk staggered back, wiping Jace’s blood from his mouth with disgust.

“Impossible,” Vosk said. “You know nothing.”

“You’re too late,” said Jace. “What you’ve come here to take is already gone.”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” said Vosk. “Now it’s going to be much worse for you. I could have taken the information, returned it to the Secretist, and left you both alone.”

Jace needed something simple, something that wouldn’t demand more than a whiff of mana. He didn’t bother putting up his normal safeguards, his shield of psychic spells. He would simply enter the vampire’s mind and tear with abandon, biting into Vosk’s thoughts as the vampire had bitten into his. Jace would use his consciousness as a blade, slashing at anything and everything he found, trying to ruin the vampire’s entire psyche if he could. But he wasn’t ready.

Vosk backed away slowly, keeping his eyes on Jace, daring him to attack as he let the shadows envelop him. He was gone.

Jace sat cradling Emmara’s head in his lap. She was breathing, but barely, and her body was limp. Blood seeped down her temple, next to her eye. Jace kept his senses alert, ready to lash out if anything happened upon them.