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  First Magic

  The Faerene Apocalypse

  Book 4

  Jenny Schwartz

  Amy’s father is alive, but can she trust him? His human allies are the same militia who want to control Amy and use her magic against the Faerene.

  Meantime, Faerene are vanishing. Five are dead in mysterious and isolated circumstances, and Rory is called to investigate.

  With threats everywhere, Amy’s adopted human family would be safest in Justice, but that would require them to live surrounded by the Faerene. Their future would change as radically as Amy’s.

  However, everyone’s future is changing, whether they want it to or not, because prior to the Migration through the Rift the Faerene made some big assumptions about Earth and its creatures, and those assumptions are about to prove spectacularly flawed.

  Amy’s newly learned magic will be put to the test with cataclysmic results.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Want More?

  Chapter 1

  The old Pennsylvanian farmhouse kitchen struggled to contain the people and emotions crammed into it. Under the table, Digger’s dog, Tabby, rested her head heavily on my feet; offering comfort as only a dog can. Everyone was concerned for me. I was worried for them.

  Beside me, my husband of a day, recapped my disjointed explanation of the events that had exploded our honeymoon.

  Only yesterday, everyone here, my adopted family, had been in the Faerene town of Justice with Rory and me to celebrate our wedding. It had been a crazy, wonderful, joyous occasion with the town filled to overflowing with all kinds of Faerene. My family and I had been the sole humans.

  But this morning a message had arrived from the humans camped twenty miles from Justice. Organized, disciplined and with their own agenda, the group was led by General Sam Dabiri. They were a militia formed from the remnants of the American military that had survived the Faerene Apocalypse. They were headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, but claimed to possess a network that stretched across the former United States of America.

  I suspected they lied.

  Over the last year, magic had torn humanity’s world apart. The technologies of the twenty first century were gone, including mass communication and transport. Using magic, the Faerene had dropped humanity back to the equivalent of Renaissance era living. Their spokesperson, Piros the Red Drake, had warned us they would.

  The Faerene had come through the Rift to Earth from their home world of Elysium. Half a million Faerene participated in the Migration, including peoples of very different kinds: griffins, dragons, elves, goblins, unicorns, and werewolves, like Rory; plus some smaller population groups like vampires and kraken.

  Healthy worlds possessed a shield that prevented people from other worlds from entering—unless the people of a world had no idea that shields existed, or other worlds, and, in relentless pursuit of linear progress and power, drilled a hole through their shield and opened a rift. Humanity had unwittingly put itself in terrible danger.

  The Faerene had monitored our drive to destruction. So had the Kstvm. Those ravening insectoid monsters spread through the universe by tearing through rifts to conquer new worlds, consuming and extinguishing all life (or all non-Kstvm life) before moving on. The Faerene had beaten the Kstvm to our planet, knowing that there’d been no returning to Elysium. The Faerene home world would never risk itself by opening a rift.

  Earth’s new Faerene had turned and fought the Kstvm, barring them from entering and laying waste to our world. They beat back the Kstvm and sealed the Rift, but in restoring Earth’s shield, the Faerene also locked away the chance for others of their kind to join them.

  They were on their own among humans, who didn’t understand the danger of the Kstvm and had every reason to hate the Faerene for the apocalypse they’d wrought.

  To keep Earth’s shield from ripping again, the Faerene had violently corrected humanity’s linear-minded pursuit of progress.

  We’d been saved from the Kstvm turning us into cattle and ravaging our world, but six-sevenths of humanity died of disease, violence and starvation.

  Now we had a planet of one billion humans and half a million Faerene, and neither side trusted the other.

  Except for me, and the adopted human family that I’d dragged into the mess with me.

  I was a human familiar, one of approximately four hundred humans who possessed magic. According to Faerene scientists, no humans should have magic. They hadn’t detected any in us during centuries of remote monitoring of Earth from Elysium. Humans had exploited all other resources, but we hadn’t accessed magic. Or so the Faerene, with a couple of notable exceptions, believed.

  “The militia kidnapped your dad?” Jarod, my adopted brother, stared at me. His brown eyes begged me to say it wasn’t so. His dad, Mike, was ex-Army and proud of it. Jarod had grown up believing that the US military were the good guys.

  “They’re holding him hostage,” Rory said. “If they meant to reunite father and daughter, they’d have brought Sean with them to Justice, or else given Amy his location.” His statement made the militia’s design and actions starkly clear. The rolling growl beneath his voice showed what he thought of them. “Amy is sure the letter is from her father. He mentioned things strangers wouldn’t know.”

  Things like Lou-ann, my stuffed toy goose from childhood. “I might have believed the letter was a genuine attempt to make contact with me, but Dad added a warning. He wrote that I should do what he’d always said and ‘tough it out’. But that wasn’t what he used to say. He’d tell me, ‘There’s an easy path and a right path. You and me, we take the right path.’ He was warning me not to…” Rory’s hand tightened around mine. I swallowed and got the words out. “He was warning me not to bow to threats. Even threats against him.” At least, that was how I interpreted the secret message.

  Digger sat across the table from me. He was about my dad’s age, and we’d kind of adopted one another at the beginning of the apocalypse as parent and adult child. He was Mike’s friend and an ex-army sergeant. He’d taught me how to patrol and been with me when we’d had to kill to defend the town. Apfall Hill had ridden out the apocalypse better than many places, but we’d still lost far too many to the summer fevers.

  It was winter, now. The hectic pace of survival had slowed. There was time to think and to worry, and currently, to be angry.

  Fury burned in Digger’s eyes.

  At the head of the table, Mike cursed, and apologized to Stella who sat at the foot of the table, nearest the stove with its crackling fire.

  The farmhouse and surrounding land were hers. She’d come here as a bride over fifty years ago. Her husband, Bud, died years before the apocalypse. They hadn’t had children. But she’d opened her home to us, and we’d made ourselves a family: Stella, Mike, Jarod and his brother, Craig, Digger, and Niamh, a former firefighter from Pittsburgh who’d been hiking when the troubles began and who’d joined us rather than try and fight her way back to a city destroying itself.

  Cities had been bad places during the apocalypse. The caravans brought us news of them and how some were recovering, others abandoned, and that about a third remained in a state of anarchy. The caravans traded in goods and news. Some people had adopted a nomadic lifestyle, too traumatized to settle anywhere.

  Apfall Hill welcomed the caravans, initially. They reconnected us to the world. But that
was before we realized how they were being used; that the guards who accompanied the caravans were militia members reporting to General Dabiri. They had spied on us. They were the ones who’d told Dabiri of my existence and my links to the Faerene.

  “I don’t understand,” Stella said. “Why would they threaten you, Amy? You said that Mayor Bataar had met with the general and his staff and was considering their request to trade with them.”

  General Dabiri had proposed to the Faerene that the militia trade goods for information. He’d been blunt at the meeting with Bataar, the centaur blacksmith who led the new town of Justice. Dabiri had promised that the humans would marshal their resources to produce whatever the Faerene wanted, just as long as in return they were guaranteed open lines of communication. He’d spoken of coexistence.

  Mike snorted. “Stupid brass. They overestimate themselves.”

  “That’s our assessment,” Rory agreed. “Their temporary camp is twenty miles from Justice, but they must have seen some of the many Faerene arriving for our wedding.”

  Understanding dawned on Jarod. “Except they didn’t know about your wedding, and the timing…” He started laughing.

  Mike’s grin was sour. “Yeah. They decided that the Faerene poured into Justice to debate Dabiri’s request to open trade between humans and the Faerene.”

  “So the letter from her father that they passed to Amy?” Stella peered around, bewildered.

  “They wanted to attach a string to Amy to make her their puppet,” Niamh said.

  Our heads snapped in her direction. Since she was typically serenely competent and kind, her bitter comment commanded attention.

  Mike slapped the shoulder of his dog, Skull, who leaned against his knee. His other dog, Brutus, watched us from near the stove. With the cold weather, Stella had allowed the two former junkyard dogs into the house, along with Tabby. “The militia overestimated their importance, and that led them to show their hand too early. They wanted to ensure that Amy was under their control even in Justice.”

  “What can we do about your dad?” Digger asked.

  Tears stung my eyes. “It’s being done. Nils is looking for him. That’s why he’s got the letter. Dad handwrote it, so Nils can use it in a spell to locate him.”

  Digger nodded, satisfied.

  At the wedding yesterday, the beginnings of friendship had sprung up between him and Nils. What they had in common, I refused to consider too closely. Nils was an elf and a member of Rory’s werewolf pack, as well as serving as a guard for the Faerene Magistrate for the North American Territory. Back on Elysium, before the Migration, he’d been an assassin.

  One thing I knew, whatever it took, Nils would bring Dad home. As outraged as my adopted family were at the militia’s implied threat against me, the Faerene in Justice were even angrier. Dabiri and his people ought to grovel. The Faerene’s anger was of the powerful, unforgiving kind. Behaving honorably and respecting the negotiation period mattered to them.

  I would have hoped it mattered to the militia, too.

  Since it didn’t appear to, Rory and I had interrupted the end of lunch at the farm to bring a warning. We’d traveled to Pennsylvania via a portal from Justice.

  The new town had been founded south of the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers by the Faerene magistrate for the territory, who happened to be the Faerene magician I was oath bound to: the black griffin magician, Istvan. The North American Territory took in everything north of a line from San Francisco to Houston, and Istvan oversaw the balance of magic and the resolution of magical conflicts within it.

  Rory was head of the magisterial guard unit, and second only to Istvan in authority in the territory. My new husband had the magical ability to fulfil that role as well as the military service background for it. He might look like the boy next door, all grown up and sexy, with reddish brown hair, freckles and a gorgeously muscled body, but the truth was that he was dangerous. The militia’s threat against me—holding Dad hostage for my obedience—had Rory ready to call down the fires of hell.

  If the situation was reversed, I’d be the same.

  When you loved someone, you wanted them to be safe.

  Looking around the kitchen table, I saw the next obvious targets for the militia once Nils rescued my father. I blurted out both my worry and a reassurance. “Yana and Berre are going to stay here for a few days while we work out how to make you safe.”

  “Because we’re a target for those who want to control you,” Mike concluded.

  Craig glared at him. “Your precious army.” He said it like a curse, one heavy with the echoes of old arguments.

  “Militia,” Mike said. “There’s a difference.”

  Rory cut short the family argument. “We’re here to offer you options. I can arrange for a few Faerene to move near enough to provide you with protection from humans with ill intent, although that will require some cooperation from you. Those visiting you would be monitored. This is what Yana and Berre will do over the next few days. But they can’t stay long term.”

  “They’re pack and they stay with you,” Jarod said. Of all the family, he was the one most interested in the werewolves.

  “Their lives, their jobs, are in Justice,” Rory said. “And yes, being with the pack is important to them. By Faerene custom you have the option to also become pack, or at least, to claim alliance. You are Amy’s family. I’m the leader of Hope Fang Pack and that means that Amy as my mate—wife—can bring her family with her into her new life.”

  The humans around the table watched him in silence, seeming scarcely to breathe.

  “That is your second option,” Rory said. “You can return with us to Justice and make your home there. The town and its surrounds has work enough for all of you.” He looked at Stella. “Few elders joined the Migration, so as you saw yesterday at the wedding, you would be especially welcomed and honored. As Peggy showed.”

  Peggy was the cook at the magistrate hall as well as the matriarch of her extended goblin family. She and Stella were as thick as thieves, first from conversing via magic mirror, and then, from the time spent together in preparing for and celebrating Rory’s and my wedding.

  Nonetheless, Apfall Hill was Stella’s home, as it was Mike, Craig and Jarod’s. Digger and Niamh were newcomers. They exchanged a look before both focused on Stella.

  “Your third option is to continue as you are, without more protection from the Faerene than Cervene’s oversight.”

  At Istvan’s request, the dragon Cervene had made this part of Pennsylvania her territory. She’d even introduced herself to the people of Apfall Hill.

  “Few people turned out to meet Cervene,” Digger said.

  Mike frowned at his friend.

  The significance of Digger’s comment could be inferred. The majority of people in Apfall Hill rejected contact with the Faerene.

  How did that affect my adopted family?

  I looked a question at Jarod.

  He stared at the tabletop.

  Rory broke the silence. “Maybe there’s a fourth option we haven’t thought of. We’ll help you according to your wishes.”

  Craig rocked back, balancing his chair on two legs. “You say your pack would take us in, but what about the other Faerene in town?”

  “You would be accepted, as you were yesterday, as Amy’s family. You would be equal to everyone else. A number of Faerene have very little magic.”

  “Son,” Mike began in a warning tone. His gaze flicked to Stella. No one needed the reminder. We knew that this was Stella’s home, but that she couldn’t survive here alone. To leave Apfall Hill was to leave her.

  I had. But I hadn’t had a choice. A dragon had stolen me away. It was thanks to Rory and Istvan that I hadn’t lost my old life completely. Although my family were paying for that now.

  Stella laughed. “All this tiptoeing around my feelings. Well, I say we go.”

  Jaws dropped.

  She stared around with bright-eyed defiance. Her gray hair
was neatly combed and her purple cardigan buttoned to her throat. “I mightn’t have much future left. No, that’s the plain-spoken truth. I’m old. But I’m not stupid. Rory is giving us a chance that we’d be fools to turn down. Foolish for ourselves and sadly foolish for other humans. The militia is being stupid, if not worse.” She pressed her hands together, the knuckles swollen with arthritis. “We have a chance to live among the Faerene and be ordinary. Just people together.”

  I sniffed. That was what I wanted for humanity and the Faerene. Less grandly, I’d love to have my family close by. But this wasn’t my choice to make or my right to influence the others’ choices.

  “I’d go to Justice with you, Stella,” Digger said. “At least to see you settled. I’m not sure how long I’d stay after that.” He looked at Rory.

  “No commitment is necessary,” Rory responded.

  Jarod jumped up. “I’m in!”

  The front legs of Craig’s chair came down with a thump. “Me, too.”

  Niamh reached across and covered Stella’s hands with one of hers. “I’m with you.” She looked at me and smiled.

  Mike was the lone holdout. He was one of Apfall Hill’s town leaders. He’d led us through the apocalypse. He’d invested a lot, emotionally, in everyone’s survival.

  “Dad, you might have their back, but they don’t have yours.” Jarod laid out the facts. “Tim Schmidt—”

  “No one listens to Tim,” Mike interrupted.

  Craig rose and stood by Jarod. The two brothers usually fought, without animosity, but from different perspectives on life. For the moment, they stood united. “Doesn’t matter whether people listen to Tim. The guy doesn’t have an original idea in his head. What he’s spouting, he’s heard from someone else. He’s saying we’re keeping magic to ourselves. That we ought to share it. Ought to be made to share it.”

  Digger rose, protective fury in the tense lines of his body. “I hadn’t heard that last bit.”

  Jarod gave him a quick grin. “I don’t reckon Tim’d say it in your hearing.” His grin died as he stared down at his father at the head of the table. “Dad, they’re saying your blacksmithing owes something to magic.”