Infinities' Edge Read online

  ‘Hey there little lady, you all on your lonesome here?’

  ‘I sure am,’ she said, putting on her best southern drawl for this dolt.

  ‘Well, that’s a crying shame. Someone as beautiful as you should not be walkin’ alone round these parts. You never know what might come of you.’

  ‘You here with your Coven?’ she asked, looking around in a fake attempt to see anyone else.

  Troy came in closer to her to talk in lower tones. ‘I have some friends here,’ he said.

  He sounded a little defensive like he suddenly thought better than to tell her the truth, which she felt pretty sure she knew anyway. Troy had been a member of the Magi Legion for years now, and although the Coven House wasn’t too far away, he was the only Magus here tonight.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean to pry, it’s just, I am currently between Covens and when I saw your big ol’ handsome face back there, I jus’ had to know your name. I’m Angel by the way.’

  ‘Troy,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, but, their loss is our gain I guess? Why’d you leave your last Coven?’

  ‘Man problems. The pig just didn’t appreciate me, didn’t understand my needs,’ she said as she stepped in closer to him and put one of her hands on his chest. ‘If you know what I mean?’

  ‘Any man that doesn’t appreciate you, needs therapy, in my humble opinion.’

  ‘Thank you. I appreciate that. You know. He got obsessed by some other witch. Said he’d heard stories that she was the chosen one or something. Mentioned something about some Prophecy of Helene.’

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Amanda, that’s it, Amanda-Jane Page. Said she was some kind of chosen one.’

  Troy backed off from her then, looking less enraptured and more than a little concerned. ‘Who… Who are you?’

  ‘Just a concerned member of the Magi community, wanting to make sure people know what’s going on,’ she said, stepping back, away from Troy and into the crowd. ‘Don’t forget what I told you now,’ she said as more and more people filled the growing gap between them before she turned and walked away, eventually finding a suitable place to Port and leaving this rodeo behind.

  Troy sat in Forests office in Fort Ward, the home of the Magi Legion. The office had a military feel to it, accented by southern and right wing viewpoints such as having the confederate flag up on the wall.

  Troy had returned from the rodeo only moments before, Porting back as quickly as he could after his encounter with Angel. She was a beauty and his mind kept wandering off into more carnal thoughts as he thought of how she looked in those tiny shorts. But things had taken a turn for the strange when she’d mentioned Amanda. Everyone in the Magi Legion knew of Amanda and her rise to prominence in New York. Forest hated her and made sure everyone in the Legion knew why.

  It all seemed a little too convenient that Angel would mention Amanda to him given his allegiance to the Legion. But she’d also mentioned something new and, if true, slightly concerning. Angels comment about Amanda being the Chosen one and her reference to the Prophecy of Helene. Troy didn’t know a huge amount about such things, and he remembered being told something about the Prophecy, but he’d be damned if he could remember what exactly.

  Anyway, he thought that Forest should know and he also knew that he’d want to know right away, which is why he’d left the Rodeo barely fifteen minutes ago. Now Forest sat before him looking into the middle distance having listened to Troy’s description of the encounter. He looked deep in thought.

  ‘So, what do you think?’ Troy asked.

  ‘I’m not sure, but one thing is for certain, you’re not the only one to hear about this. It’s all over the Dark Web. Someone wants to either discredit Amanda or get unwanted attention on her.’

  ‘Well, that’s good isn’t it?’ Troy offered.

  ‘Possibly. But if this prophecy is true and it is her, then discrediting her would be much harder to accomplish,’ Forest said. He looked over to his wife, Stella Ward. ‘Gather the Coven, I think we need to keep a close eye on Amanda for a while.

  Crossing

  Pacific Ocean

  Jan 7th

  Amanda walked up to the huge rock in the center of the small Island in the middle of the atoll. She’d returned here a few times these past few weeks, looking for anything that might help her learn more about the fate of Mr Black.

  She pushed through bushes and undergrowth to finally find the odd metallic door set into the rock. Her enhanced Magical ability picked up the faint Magical signature hidden behind the door, but only just. She could feel the Essentia, the Magical energy behind here and the temporal energy that the device held in flux.

  She thought back to her meeting with Mr Black, here on this beach, when he’d told her everything that he knew. It had taken some cajoling to get the information out of him, but once he started talking, he didn’t stop.

  This strange man who went only by the rather formal name of Mr Black, although she doubted that would be his real name, had turned out to be her father. He’d had a night in a brothel with someone called Sofia who looked just like her before the device behind this door sent him back in time to free his family from the control of the Scion Horlack. He succeeded but paid a hefty price. His family had been wiped out and he’d been aged fifty years. An unexpected benefit of the price he’d paid had been that he’d never existed in this timeline before that point. He was a ghost with no official record, and with the resources the Weaver had left him, he’d set up the Syndicate and formulated his crazy plan to kill the Archons.

  After thinking about things for a while these past few weeks, one question kept coming back to her, and from it, she knew there must be more to this story than even Mr Black knew.

  In his description of events, he had been living in an alternate timeline where his family remained alive but under the control of Horlack. When the Weavers time device sent him back, his actions not only freed his family, it also split the timeline, creating a new separate timeline where his family died out during the Black Death Plague years and Mr Black had never existed. But if that was true, and this was the alternate timeline, how did Sofia, her mother, cross from that other timeline to this one?

  Thinking about these timelines and time travel made her head hurt, and if you thought about it too much, things just got more and more confusing.

  She shook her head and banished those thoughts. She’d come here not to think of the time device or the Weavers, she’d come here to try and find her father, Mr Black, who had disappeared when the Nuclear missile exploded over the island, obliterating the old atoll and creating this new one.

  The island Amanda stood on sat in the center of a ring of islands that marked the edge of the crater the blast had created. This small patch of sand and rock only survived because of the protective shield that she and her friends had created to protect themselves from the bomb. And somehow, Mr Black had found himself outside of the shield. His chances of his survival were slim, to say the least, and it might be that she would never get the answers she needed. She doubted that Mr Black had those answers anyway and actually believed that he knew as much as she did about it, but even so, he was her father and she just needed to try and find him, or some hint about his fate that day.

  She’d been around this atoll several times and hadn’t found anything. Looking back in time with her Magic just didn’t work here, the whole area seemed to be infused with temporal energy that threw off any kind of attempt to do so.

  The sun sat low in the western horizon, a glowing orange disc that cast vibrant oranges and yellows across the heavens and the few clouds that floated above her.

  She sat on the beach for a while, watching the sun sink towards and then slowly below the sea, enjoying the display of colour and light as it went.

  Looking at her arms she ran her fingers over her skin, tracing the lines of the strange tattoo that had been branded on her back and upper arms. She had no idea where th
e strange energy that had done this to her had come from, or what the tattoo actually meant. There were clearly words written in it or runes and symbols at least, but all her research had come to nothing. She had no idea what this thing was or what it said or meant for her.

  Gentle Water had been fascinated by it, and desperately wanted to spend some time with her and get her to test her new abilities out. He and Maria and even Raven had said to her that they all thought the Prophecy of Helene referred to her. She had to admit, parts of it did fit.

  For instance, it said, “You will know these times by the mark of the creator. Placed upon the body of one of your own,” and then the part later that said, “See the body marked by the power of the creator.” This all seemed to refer to this tattoo, but it didn’t elaborate beyond it.

  Also, her Aura seemed to fit now, matching the part that read, “Mark her soul, with colours of life and Death.” Two colours that were only present in your aura when you were first born and just before your own natural death, gold and deep violet, were now ever present in her aura.

  The prophecy also spoke of her ability to cross into the Abyss, but she had refused to try it so far, wanting to take some time to herself, enjoy the holidays, forget about being a Magi and also get her head around what this all might mean.

  She laid back on the sand, her vibrant long red hair spilling out around her as she took a breath and tried to relax for a moment.

  She’d had a very pleasant holiday season, and even spent some lovely quality time with Maria. Their trip to Monte Carlo, where she’d worn that daring red dress again for her lover had been a little more action packed than she had hoped, but fun all the same.

  A couple of months ago, things seemed kind of good, settled almost after having dealt with Lucian and with the announcement of New York being free. She’d even got together with Maria, something that she had never expected. Life had been good until Mr Black had shown up and thrown a spanner in the works.

  She doubted she would find Mr Black now, though. She’d looked around here several times and found nothing. She felt like she had started to get her head around the idea of this tattoo and what it might mean, and while she could take a few days to herself to figure some things out, she knew all too well that the world would not wait for her and she would need to start to deal with all this.

  She resolved to go and see Gentle Water tomorrow morning and to see if she could pass into the abyss with her Magic now or not. She wanted to know herself but felt a bit more confident about trying it if her mentor was with her. She also wanted to follow up on the one lead that Mr Black had given her, about someone who went by the online name of Edge and apparently knew her mother or had met her. She’d get Shaun to look into that.

  And then there was Yasmin. Once again this mysterious woman had saved her life and the lives of her friends with no apparent gain to herself. The rumours about her made for compelling if scary reading, but her own experience of her had been quite different.

  The gossip said Yasmin was a Nomad, and a cruel, ruthless and very intelligent one. They said she was the most dangerous Nomad on the planet, someone to fear and avoid.

  But this had been far from Amanda’s experience with her. She had a fairly cold manner to her and always came across a bit aloof and above those around her, but Yasmin had spoken with Amanda a few times and saved her life even more than that.

  After the death of Lucian, Amanda had been the subject of a few rumours herself, some of which were so far from the truth that they barely resembled her or the events they spoke of.

  Had Yasmin been the subject of the same kind of gossip for so long that the tales of her were now so far from the truth of her as to be unrecognisable?

  Amanda felt she needed to know, and when they’d last met, Yasmin had agreed to grant Amanda the ability to contact her via a Mental Link.

  Creating a Mental Link was a bit like swapping your phone numbers for the Magi. It didn’t grant either person access to the others mind, it didn’t allow you to find them at any time you chose or weaken your defences against them. All it meant was that you could contact them, you could send a request to speak with them and if the other Magus accepted, a Link was created between you that allowed you to send messages, thoughts, images and more through to the other person.

  Even with an open Link, you couldn’t automatically read the other person’s thoughts and you could only Port to them if they didn’t actively hide their location. So even if Yasmin did turn out to be as bad as the legends said, the Link didn’t endanger her any more than she could handle.

  After the events on the island, with Yasmin stepping in to help Amanda once again, she found that she needed to know. She really wanted to know what the deal was with Yasmin, and that would mean that she would need to actually meet her properly, to sit down and talk to her. Not today, but in the next few days.

  Amanda sat up again, she needed to get back home to get some rest tonight. Sure, she could use her Magic to refresh herself, but nothing really beat getting a good nights sleep.

  Concentrating and pulling the local threads of Essentia to her, she Ported back into her bedroom, appearing on her bed after a brief flash of light and the feeling of dislocation that always accompanied a Port.

  Feeling much better the following morning, Amanda practically bounced into the basement Ops room that Shaun used as his personal office with his Initiated assistant Vanessa.

  Amanda had worn her usual distressed bootcut skinny jeans, trainers and a fitted top that exposed her midriff. She kept her hair loose and let it cascade over her shoulders like a crimson waterfall.

  ‘Top of the mornin’ to yeh what’s the craic today Shaun?’ she said in her Irish lilt.

  ‘Good morning Amanda, I hope you’re well?’

  ‘Very well thank you.’

  ‘Good. Well, we’ve found one thing this morning that I think will be of interest to you.’

  ‘Go on,’ Amanda interjected.

  ‘We’re picking up some rumours that are being spread about you online. We’ve not found the source yet, but they’re being spread around quite quickly.’

  ‘Oh really? Are you about to put a dampener on my day?’

  ‘That depends on you. They’re actually just telling the truth, so it depends on if you want that truth telling,’ Shaun said.

  ‘And that truth is…?’

  ‘They say that you’re the chosen one, the one talked about in the Prophecy of Helene. They also say you have been marked by a mysterious energy after a fight on an Island somewhere,’ he said, indicating her tattoo.

  Amanda glanced at her arm. ‘Hmm. Okay, keep monitoring them, hopefully, this will die away.’

  ‘Anything else I can do for you?’ Shaun asked.

  ‘Actually, there is. I need for you to find someone. Someone who has used the Dark Web and goes by the name of “Edge”, if that’s possible?’ she asked, referring to the secret section of the Internet created and maintained by the Magi community and sometimes referred to as the DWeb.

  ‘Can you give me anything else to go on?’

  ‘Something about the Island of Tarut and the disaster that happened there about twenty years ago, I think he might have been there.’

  ‘And it’s a “he” is it?’ Shaun said.

  ‘Sorry, I’m not one hundred percent sure on that. Maybe.’

  ‘Okay, sure. I can give that a try.’

  Amanda smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said and scooted round his desk to give him a kiss on the cheek before saying her goodbye and leaving Shaun to his work.

  The winter sun beat down on the roof terrace of her house where she sat with Gentle Water. Outside the magical boundaries of her house the air would feel very chill, but here, her Magic kept them warm and comfortable as they sat on the outside seats. She already felt much better today. Refreshed and awake after a great nights sleep. She’d woken up late but didn’t really care. She didn’t have anywhere she needed to be, only that she wanted to put Gentle Water ou
t of his misery finally and see if she really could pass into the Abyss, through the Barrier of Acheron.

  The roof terrace happened to be one of her favourite areas of her house. She loved the views and the fresh air, so it made sense to try this somewhere she felt very comfortable.

  Looking around her, it also occurred to her that this might very well be the perfect place for her to meet with Yasmin. The Nomad already knew where her house was anyway, so it would be pointless to try and hide it. Also, she would be on home ground which might give her some much-needed confidence to ask Yasmin the questions she wanted answers for.

  That was settled then she thought, she’d invite Yasmin here, to her rooftop to meet with her.

  Amanda sat forward in the chair, letting Gentle Water, who stood behind her, examine her tattoo. He’d been looking at it and taking notes for maybe 10 minutes.

  ‘We need to find some time to do this properly, maybe I take some photos of it so I not bother you all the time? It is fascinating,’ he said in his Chinese-accented English.

  ‘Well I’m glad you find it interesting, I’m not sure what I make of it really,’ Amanda said.

  ‘You not like it?’

  ‘I don’t know, it’s all still very new to me.’

  ‘I understand,’ he said and moved round to sit before her. ‘So, are you ready to try crossing into the Abyss?’

  Amanda took a breath, closed her eyes for a moment and then looked back at her mentor. ‘To be sure.’

  ‘Good, then you should try,’ he said.

  ‘Do you have any idea what I will find there? What it will be like?’

  ‘Good question. Very few have crossed into Abyss, and no true report has been made. But many have had visions. Seen what they think was the Abyss. They say it always dark, filled with strange creatures and very dangerous. You do not need to stay there. We only testing to see if this works.’

  ‘Sure, sure. I’ll be grand. I might even have a wander don’t you know.’