Page 99 of Transfiguration
“You’ll have a lot of reading and training to catch up on,” Hart had told Page when offering the job of an assistant.
“Of course,” Page agreed. “I’ve worked for Rou for years.” He thought Hart meant he needed more skills to be a good personal assistant for an individual as powerful as Hart.
“I mean in magic,” Hart clarified. “You’ll need to study the magic that keeps me bound. If the beast breaks through, I want you to rip my soul free, disperse the power, and shatter the revenant. Keep them from using what remains.”
Page gaped at him. “I’m not powerful enough to even contemplate—”
“Training,” Hart corrected. “The power is there. It’s the training you lack. You’ll have a very long list of reading.”
“But the others…” Page thought back to the witches who had helped him transfer the broken soul from the golem to the magic urn.
“Have only a quarter of the power you do, but years of skill. You’ll be learning from them in time.”
“I know what he is,” Page told Kaine. The manifestation of Wind that had tried to take over Constantine and Hart was a thousand times more powerful. Hart could have contained them all, but it would have been pure stupidity for anyone to think they could control him. Perhaps Nate wasn’t that dumb, and it’s why when the leaders went silent he’d begun searching for another way and took the one piece he had, Matthew, to find another vessel.
Page turned toward the door and the waiting cars that would take them into the city. He thought of the hidden library beneath Hart’s building and the many tunnels that connected his space, which no one knew about except Hart and Page. The archives were hidden, locked until Hart could open them, or Luca, in his place. Page wondered if that meant that Hart’s other children, who were all vampires now, could open the sealed vaults. Many were woven with both magic, DNA samples, and technology to make science fiction novelists gasp.
“No one has access to this stuff?” Seiran asked as he met Page at the door. Kaine stayed inside, turning back to head toward the basement where his siblings and uncles and grandmother waited. Kaine had not crossed the veil, but he had spent several long hours in discussion with Constantine about it.
“No one. Hart only brought me there once,” Page said. “He instructed me to show Luca how to open it if something happened to him. He said that the knowledge within is the most dangerous of all the works he’d gathered over the centuries. Constantine said they did not register some books he has retrieved with the Fellowship. Maybe Hart put them there?”
Seiran nodded and squeezed Page’s shoulder as they headed to the car. “I’m hoping for information on the fae. You want more on summoning magic. I think we should probably keep all these texts secure, regardless.” They got into a large SUV with Gabe at the wheel, the trio in the center. Page took the very back, while Seiran took the front passenger seat.
“Is it all books?” Sam asked, sounding annoyed as Gabe steered them into the city. The car was encased in a dark fog even in the middle of the night to keep anyone from tracking them.
Page shook his head, recalling the things he’d seen in Hart’s secret vault. “More than books and scrolls. Weapons, wands, staffs, magic artifacts of all kinds.”
“Witches don’t use wands or staffs,” Seiran mumbled.
But Page’s memory burned with vivid intensity of being drawn to one particular wand etched in carvings that he could only hope to someday understand. It had been encased in spelled glass as a precaution. Page had stared at it for so long, hearing it speak to him, while unable to make out the words, until Hart had pulled him away.
“Not all witches use elements,” Page said quietly. There had been a staff that Hart had lingered over, it too, warded. A gift from a former lover, Hart had said.
“I use runes,” Con said. “I think most witches are stunted by using only spells, and written spells at that.” He had the book in his lap that they had retrieved from Nate. Page had already gone through it and made notes, but he looked forward to studying more like it.
“I have a wand,” Luca said.
Sam slapped a hand over his mouth to keep the sex joke from emerging.
“Witches a thousand years ago used a lot of artifacts,” Gabe added. “Wands, staffs, familiars, crystals, and a ton of other things. The rise of the Dominion and the Christian church brought an end to most of the artifacts. It could get a witch killed if they were caught. But not all witches need them either. It’s a bit like a vampire’s Focus. One particular item to help unify the will of the witch.”
“You didn’t have one?” Seiran asked.
“Not really,” Gabe admitted. “My affinity for the dead has always been pretty strong. Necromancy is part of blood magic, much like vampirism is. My change only amplified the ability.”
Page looked away as they drove, letting his gaze fall to half-lidded, and observed the magic around them. He knew it wasn’t the same way everyone else viewed the world. It was the spirit he saw. The soul, for those of religious thought, but Page knew it was the manifestation of magic within them. Whatever made them who they were, filled with magic, was tied to that spirit of energy. He could see it, touch them all, possibly unwind them from their mortal coils. He’d seen Seiran do it to witches before they were executed. Page could do a lot more than cut the ties.
He looked at the book in Con’s lap, leaned against the back of the seats to prop it open. It had offered a glimpse into his power, and Page was hungry for more. He hoped to see the wand again, maybe even understand its call, but also find a way to set right the corruption freed nearly a century ago when an earth witch had been murdered to give his power to a vampire who had never meant to hold an energy that strong.
A battle was coming. One between humanity, magic, and evil. Page didn’t know if they would win, but he planned to do everything he could to correct the imbalance that had the elements raging. If that meant taking all the magic from humans and giving it back to the gods, so be it. He’d seen enough evil to know that humans weren’t any more good or divine than some invisible god. Perhaps it was time to take it all away and sever the Dominion of man. It was one of the few points of the Humans First doctrine he agreed with, but he said nothing as he rode along in the back with some of the most powerful witches on the planet.
Change was never easy, but necessary. Page closed his eyes and wondered what the world would be like without witches or vampires or fae.