Mikko Lawrence

The scene in front of the house made Mikko’s heart lodge in his throat.

A man stood outsid, wearing a long cloak the hung over him like a shadow.  He held his arms out, hands splayed and facing the house.  Mikko could only see the back of his head—closed-cropped salt-and-pepper hair.

Annie was behind the man, sunk into the ground up to just past her knees.  She was trying to pull out her feet while shouting at the man.

Mikko and Carlos got out of the car almost before it was in park.  Carlos left it running.

The man looked back towards them.  He had a stubbly beard and moustache that gave him an unkempt look.  His cheekbones were high, cheeks sunken in.  He looked to be maybe in his mid-to-late-fifties.

He made a noise of annoyance, turning away as he flicked one hand towards them. 

The ground below Mikko shook, and he almost fell.  The creaking and crackling sound of rock below him vibrated up his legs, but the concrete below him didn’t suck him in like it had Annie.

“Geomancer,” Carlos growled.  “Not a pyromancer.”

“Ah, you’ve heard of me,” the man said without looking back at them.  Mikko could guess this was Charlton Windsor.  The name sounded British, and so did he. 

The first time Windsor had seen them, he hadn’t seemed to register Mikko.  But this time he did and his eyes narrowed. 

“You’re one of those kids that stole my necklace,” he said, taking a step closer to Mikko.

A deep growl rumbled next to Mikko and he looked to see that Carlos had transformed.  He was a bear whose head came up to the bottom of Mikko’s ribs.  He was completely black with the exception of white fur that arched above and around his eyes, filled his muzzle, and disappeared into his chest.  Explained why they were called spectacled bears.

“Bloody shifters,” Windsor snarled, snapping his wrist at Carlos. 

The sidewalk tore open wide, like a gaping maw.  Mikko skittered to the side to avoid falling into the broken ground. 

Carlos leapt away, landing on the man and shoving him to the ground.  Before Carlos could do anything, the ground beneath swallowed them.  It only brought Carlos as far down as his chest before cementing him in, but it swallowed Windsor whole.

Carlos transformed back into his human form.  His limbs went from being the size of Mikko’s thighs to a normal human size.  He pulled out of the ground just in time to meet the mage as the ground behind Carlos opened again.

Carlos went into a half-form, his hands turning to huge paws.  The mage barely had the chance to throw up his arms to catch them.  Carlos’s claws didn’t cut through the mage’s robe.

Mikko ran to Annie to help.  “Can you transform?” he asked.

“Every time I try, something goes wrong.  I don’t know if his magic is fucking with me or what.  Go inside.”

He shook his head, “No, I—”

The door to the house opened and Bell shot out, slamming the door shut behind him so hard that frame rattled.  He stayed in his human form, shirtless, throwing out a hand to shoot green fire at where the mage still stood engaged with Carlos. 

The mage roared in frustration and the ground swallowed him again.  The fire hurtled towards Carlos and Bell yelped.  With the yelp, the green fire dissipated.

The mage reappeared, this time behind Bell.  Bell turned, but before he could react, Windsor had a hand on his shoulder.

Bell screamed, crumpling to his knees.  Windsor let go of him, leaving a white palm print on his shoulder that shimmered.  “Don’t try metaphysiomancy on a metaphysiomancer, dog,” he snarled at Bell.

Carlos, a bear once again, hurtled into Windsor from the side before he could take a breath, knocking him to the ground.  He tore into Windsor’s chest, but his claws couldn’t penetrate the cloak.  What the fuck was that made of?

“Enough,” the mage screamed.

The ground around him spiked up and launched Carlos into the air.  Carlos transformed in midair, flipping around to land on his feet.  Before he could land, the dirt and rock that had launched him up followed him.  It wrapped around his wrists and legs and slammed him into the ground, shackling him in the ground. 

Carlos struggled against the earth tethering him to no avail.  He tried to transform but only got partway before shouting in pain.  The ground didn’t expand with his shifting, crushing his wrists and legs.  He turned back into his human form.

“Finally,” Windsor said, turning to Mikko, the only one not restrained or otherwise indisposed.  Bell was still not standing up.

“The necklace isn’t here,” Mikko said, backing away from him.  His heart raced in his throat.  He couldn’t go against this guy.  He was only human facing down a mage that was probably ten times older and more powerful than him.

Windsor sneered at him.  “You expect me to believe that?  You gave Russell that bullshit, but I know you’re all a bunch of liars and thieves.”  He advanced on Mikko.  “All of you . . .”

As Windsor moved, Mikko saw the door to the house open ever so slightly.  He just barely bit back a cry to close the door. 

Genie poked her head out.  She looked around before locking eyes with Mikko.  She held up one of the throwing knives that were supposed to have been gifts for Sloane.  It was a dull grey—lead-plated stainless steel.  Lead fucked with mages.

Mikko immediately understood.

When he focused on Windsor again, Mikko realized he was still monologuing.  “ . . . fucking halfbreeds getting in my way.”

Of course he was racist on top of everything.

“Halfbreed?” Annie called from behind him.  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Windsor glanced back, sneering at Annie.  The movement meant that Genie had to close the door before Windsor saw her.  “You know.”  He jerked his hand up and the earth around Annie ground against her, pulling her in.  She shouted out in pain and for the first time, Mikko saw the way sweat was dripping down her face, her cheeks red.

His heart clenched in his chest.  How much pain was she in? 

“So, what, you came here to feel powerful over a bunch of kids that didn’t do nothing to you?” Mikko demanded, getting his attention again.  Mikko saw Bell slump to the ground, the white handprint still glowing on his shoulder.  His breathing was shallow.

“You stole from me,” he hissed, his full attention back on Mikko.  Mikko saw the front door open again.

“Yeah, but you’re going to come after us for some silver and a smoky topaz?” Mikko shot back.  “You can get something like that anywhere.”

Windsor sneered at him.  “You fucking halfbreeds don’t even know what you have.  The symbol etched in the center—forget it.  It’s wasted on you.”  He lunged at Mikko.

Windsor screamed, and dropping to his hands and knees just short of Mikko.  The knife Genie had been holding stuck out of the flesh between his neck and shoulder.

Carlos and Annie shouted out in pain.  The ground around them compressed, sucking them in.  The earth beneath Mikko’s feet shuddered and he fell to his knees.  His ribs shouted in protest.

Windsor reached back, straightening up, and grabbed the knife.  He screamed as the blade came loose and turned around to see Genie.  Physiopath’s perfect aim, Mikko realized dully.

Genie’s eyes went wide.  She tried to close the door, but Windsor threw out his hand. The door wouldn’t close.

“Throwing lead through a barrier breaks the barrier,” he grinned.

Mikko saw what Windsor was going to do before he did it.  He let out a strangled shout and lunged at Windsor, grabbing him around the waist and tried to knock him down.

Windsor buckled underneath him, falling to the side with Mikko’s weight on him.  But before Mikko could feel triumphant, something heavy grabbed his legs and tore him away.  Something else slammed into him from the side, knocking him senseless. 

His vision spun and his ribs and legs screamed.  He lay flat on his back, staring up at the sky.  A red haze settled over him, and he tried to sit up.  His arm buckled beneath him, and the pain that shot through his chest almost made him pass out.  His stomach roiled, threatening to throw up all the food he’d had at dinner.

Mikko’s vision cleared just in time to see Windsor throw the knife back at Genie. 

Everything slowed, and Mikko screamed Genie’s name, knowing all the while that it was useless.  He couldn’t stop the knife that sliced through the air, aimed straight at her.  Tears blurred his vision, and Mikko squeezed his eyes shut.  He couldn’t see her die.  He couldn’t.

Mikko heard the sound of the knife hitting flesh, but no one cried out. 

He opened his eyes to see Cayden standing in front of Genie.  The knife stuck out of his stomach. 

Cayden grimaced, pulling the knife out, but no blood flowed.  He stepped aside from Genie and held it out to her, hilt side out.  Genie took it with wide eyes, staring up at Cayden.  Frankie stood behind her, also staring up at him.

Windsor shouted out in pain and when Mikko looked, he saw thin white strands of light wrapped around his wrists, pulling his arms behind his back.  The light continued up from his wrists to wrap around his neck before diving down to encircle his waist and shackle his legs together.  He fell over, writhing like a worm on the ground.

A figure entered Mikko’s field of vision and stood over Windsor.  She held a cane before her that she stopped just short of hitting the bound man.  “Charlton.”

“Saorla!” Windsor said, looking up at her.  His voice had the high-pitched surprise of someone who had been caught off guard in a bad way.

“Mikko!” Annie cried out.  Mikko turned his head, his vision spinning, but he saw Annie kneel beside him, hands cradling his cheeks.  How had she gotten free?

He reached up to squeeze her hand and turned to look at Saorla and Windsor.  The fear in his stomach had resolved into a painful cold that settled over his limbs.  He fed on the warmth of Annie’s hand in his own.

“What are you doing here?” Saorla asked Windsor.  Her voice held none of the kindness that Mikko had heard when he had met her. 

“Saorla, you don’t understand, these—”

“Kids?” Saorla interrupted.  Her pale eyes were the color of glaciers, her face frozen like them.  She didn’t look capable of any of the warmth Mikko had previously seen from her.

“No, these hooligans stole a necklace from me.  A necklace I was going to gift to you!  It was inscribed in . . .”  He trailed off, his voice squeaking on the last word.

Mikko’s brain finally caught up with everything.  Windsor was afraid of her.

“So, you tried to kill them.”

“No—”

“Cayden,” Saorla interrupted him, her icy gaze still on Windsor, “I know I’m blind, so I didn’t see it, but did you or did you not just remove a knife from your stomach?  Maybe about where that girl’s neck or chest would be?”

Cayden’s response was equally as flat as Saorla’s.  “He looked to be aiming to kill, yes.”

“Hm,” Saorla said.

“Saorla, I would never go after children—”

“And yet you clearly just did.  You know how I can tell?  I am the one who installed the wards you were trying to dismantle.  I can see your sloppy, worthless magic all over my carefully crafted spells.”

Windsor stared up at her with wide eyes.  “Why—”

“Charlton, I’ve put up with you weird, obsessive crush on me for decades at this point.  I allowed it because you were second-in-command of the courts.

“But you just tried to kill three children, as well as members of the shifter courts.  In addition to attacking a family protected by the House of Living Vampires.”  She looked over at Annie and Mikko.  For the first time, Mikko realized that Carlos was also kneeling next to him.  He had pulled up Mikko’s shirt and was examining his stomach.  How had he missed that?

“Did you steal a necklace?” she asked them.

“Yes,” Annie replied.  “It belonged to Mira.”

Saorla looked back at Windsor.  “And then you tried to give me a necklace that belongs to the White Psychic?”

Windsor tried to speak but Saorla stepped forward and placed her foot squarely on his neck, cutting off anything else he would say.  “Cayden, can you see to making sure everyone here is okay?  I have some duties to take care of.”

“Of course,” Cayden said.

Cayden brought Mikko into the house, setting him on the couch.  Mikko didn’t see what happened to Saorla and Windsor. 

Cayden confirmed that Mikko’s ribs were broken, and his knee and elbow had each been popped out of their sockets.

“What did he hit me with?” Mikko slurred, staring up the ceiling.  His body ached and screamed everywhere, but the endorphins were helping.  He was exhausted.  He barely felt where Annie sat on the floor, her hand over his at his side.

“Block of concrete,” Carlos answered.  He was fussing with the first aid kit while Cayden inspected Mikko’s body.  Annie had stripped him down to his boxers.  He was in too much pain to feel embarrassed at everyone looking at him.

“Is Bell okay?”

“I am,” a voice by his ear said.

Mikko looked up to see Bell sat next to him, just above his head, looking a bit shell shocked.  Mikko could see singed skin on his shoulder in the shape of a handprint.  

“What happened to you?”

Cayden was the one to answer.  “Soulsilver gives its user an ability to use a type of magic called metaphysiomancy, even if the user has no real ability to use magic.  There’s only really two types of mages that negate metaphysiomancy—a shadowmancer or another metaphysiomancer.”

“Like how ghost Pokémon are weak to other ghost types or dark types,” Bell murmured.

Cayden didn’t say anything to that.  “Charlton is both a geomancer as well as a metaphysiomancer.  He was able to put a stopper on the werewolf’s soulsilver, binding it temporarily.  That’s what the burn is.”

Bell was still murmuring about Pokémon, not really listening.

“Is he going to be okay?” Carlos asked, eyeing Bell with a raised eyebrow.

“Yeah.  Messing with someone’s magic like that, even if the magic isn’t innate, can leave someone dazed and confused.  Since it was for such a short time, some food and some sleep should get him back to normal.”

“Alright, boludo,” Carlos said, stepping over to Bell.  “Let’s get you some food and sleep.”

Bell let Carlos pull him up.  “How did you shift in a suit?” he asked, his voice loose and dreamy.  “Your clothes are pristine.”  He reached over to run a hand on Carlos’s lapel.

Carlos raised an eyebrow.  “A Changer.”

“What’s that?”

“Ay, dios mío,” Carlos shook his head.  “Spare me a metamorfo nuevo.”  He took Bell’s wrist, pulling his hand from Carlos’s lapel, and guided him to the kitchen.

“Lina!” Annie called after Carlos.

“I already called Timber.  She’s keeping Lina overnight.”

“Oh good,” she whispered, mostly to herself.  Even this out of it, Mikko could tell she had only just remembered Lina and was ashamed of it.  He rubbed her hand absently.

Cayden poked at an ugly bruise on Mikko’s torso and earned a gasp of pain from Mikko and a snarl from Annie.  He ignored it.  “Fortunately for you, Charlton didn’t take you seriously.  If he had tried to restrain you, he would have killed you.”

“I’ll try to thank my lucky broken ribs,” Mikko coughed.  “So thankful he didn’t straight up hit me with a block of fucking concrete.”

Cayden shrugged, finally turning away to reach for the first aid kit.  Cayden took a cloth and sprayed it down with antiseptic.

“Why were you here?” Annie asked him.

That seemed to jog something for him.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out three more sets of key rings.  “More keys for your house.  One for each of the people that lives here and a couple extra in case.”

Annie took them from Cayden, and Cayden turned back to Mikko with the cloth.  “I can knit up your bones, but it’s going to fucking hurt.”

“You gonna give me some of the bone grow shit from Harry Potter?”

Cayden smirked.  “No.  I’m going to use magic.  But I can put you to sleep beforehand like in Harry Potter.”

“That would be nice.”

“Let’s get some of this blood cleaned off first.”

Mikko looked back at Annie, who still held his hand.  She met his gaze and smiled in a way that was simultaneously filled with love and annoyance, the corners of her mouth tight but her eyes soft.  “Only you would jump at a full-fledged mage and expect to get anywhere.”

“I couldn’t let him hurt Genie,” he mumbled, wincing when he felt a soft, wet cloth brushing across his legs.  He could feel the grit of concrete and dirt dislodging from his skin.  He had tried to avoid looking down because when he had seen how much blood had seeped out on the towels laid below him, he hadn’t wanted to see the damage. 

He remembered when Cayden had pulled the knife out of his stomach.  “Cayden didn’t bleed.” 

Cayden murmured back, “It’s a long story.”

Annie eyed him but didn’t press.

“What did he do to you?” Mikko asked, pulling her hand closer to his chest to look at it.  Her wrists were black and purple from the restraints.

“He held me against the ground.  I couldn’t shift . . . but Carlos could.  Until he couldn’t.”

Cayden had an answer for that, too.  “Charlton’s good at interfering with shapeshifting magic.  He can stop from human to animal but not vice versa.”

“What’s going to happen to him?” Annie asked.  Mikko wanted to kiss her because he also wanted to know, but speaking was becoming more and more of an effort.  He couldn’t ask questions and also stay awake. 

“He broke some pretty serious laws.  And Saorla caught him.  She’s high up enough in the courts that her testimony will result in an immediate death sentence.  Attacking children under twenty.  Attacking them with the clear intention to kill one.  Potentially a charge of misuse of a magical artifact, depending on what exactly that necklace is.” 

He pursed his lips, thinking for a second.  “He could have started an incident between the mage court and the Court of Living Vampires.  Same with fucking with shifters.  One of whom was Carlos Slamface Vásquez—a high profile shapeshifter.”  He nodded toward the kitchen where Mikko could still hear Carlos talking to Bell.  “Charlton wasn’t acting as an agent of the courts, but when you’re as high up as he is, it doesn’t matter.  Anything you do can be interpreted as being related to the courts.  That’s probably a charge of conspiracy and treason?”  He shrugged.  “He’ll probably be dead before sunrise.”

“Are you a mage?” Annie asked.  The tone of her voice was suspicious.  Mikko could see the way her eyes tightened as she looked at Cayden.

He shrugged, finally setting aside the bloodied cloth to work on bandaging Mikko.  “Sort of.”

“Sort of.”  Annie’s voice was flat.

“Sort of.  I’m not elaborating.  Suffice to say I work for Saorla.”

“I—”

“Annie.”

Mikko was surprised to hear Frankie’s voice behind him.  He struggled to turn his head to find the source of his voice, but it was too painful.  He gave up, letting his head fall back on the arm of the sofa.

“He just saved Genie’s life,” Frankie said.  “Leave it.”

If he could, Mikko would have done a double take.  As it was, he didn’t dare for fear of hurting himself.  Besides, Annie’s double take was much more dramatic than what Mikko could have mustered.  “Who are you?” she asked, incredulous.

“I’m tired.  We’re all tired.  We’re safe.”  Frankie paused, and Mikko realized dully he was more asking than stating a fact.

“Yes,” Cayden agreed.

“We’re safe.  Cayden is going to put Mikko back together.  If he works for Saorla, and Saorla works for Hazel, and we’re protected by Hazel—what do you even care?  You ain’t even be liking magic.”

Annie scowled at him but didn’t say anything.

“I’m going to bed,” he said.  “‘Night, Mikko.”

“‘Night.  Tell Genie ‘night.”

“She says good night.”

When he heard the creaking of two people walking down the hallway and up the stairs, he said, “Were they there the whole time?”

“Yes,” Annie answered.

Mikko closed his eyes.  He hadn’t realized.  He hadn’t even thought to see where they were.  He was so exhausted, and his body ached, and he honestly just wanted to cry from the stress of it all.

As it was, Cayden said, “Alright, let’s get you in bed and get your bones knitting up.”

“And you’re putting me to sleep, and I won’t wake up in the middle of the night in pain like he does in the book?”  Mikko couldn’t get Harry Potter out of his head.  He suddenly understood why Bell had been so focused on Pokémon.  It was easy to focus on something familiar when you were in this much pain.

“Correct.”

“Thank fuck.”