The Shock of Survival

  Table of Contents

  The Shock of Survival

  Book Details

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  About the Author

  the

  Shock

  of

  Survival

  NICOLE FIELD

  In the wake of the final battle against The Oppressor, Benedict, Ophelia and Dylan face their magical community in triumph. But that triumph rapidly loses its shine as they realise the war is not so easily left behind. Returning to, and relearning, the lives they had before proves to be more difficult than even they had anticipated.

  The Shock of Survival

  By Nicole Field

  Published by Less Than Three Press LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

  Edited by Leta Hutchins

  Cover designed by Natasha Snow

  This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.

  First Edition November 2016

  Copyright © 2016 by Nicole Field

  Printed in the United States of America

  Digital ISBN 9781620048900

  Who would have known writing my

  first poly V would have been so difficult?

  To Fergie and Sara,

  You know what you did.

  Prologue

  The Oppressor was defeated.

  Three young heroes stepped into the manor where they were greeted with cheers and exhilaration from their fellow magicians. Benedict Whitford, Ophelia Grey, and Dylan Hargrove had become household names over the last three years. They had only been seventeen when they joined the war. They were the next generation—the strongest, most promising magicians of an age.

  Of course that had meant they'd also been thrown into the front lines of the war by the Elders, their strength and promise used to concoct a plan full of danger and, ultimately, triumph.

  Benedict looked as though the only thing keeping him upright was the flanking presence of Ophelia and Dylan. Dylan wasn't doing much better. And Ophelia…

  She wore an exhausted smile on her elfin features as she greeted everyone who met her with a nod and a crinkling of the eyes. It seemed as though the smile was exhausting her even further. Though all three of them wore unkempt clothes—torn and skin smudged with dirt—the change in Ophelia was perhaps the most startling. Her long, blonde hair fell in lanky, tattered hanks around her face, and her high cheekbones only made her hollow cheeks appear more gaunt.

  A couple of Elders were trying to shush everyone at the manor, but it was a job that was far easier to attempt than achieve. Finally, Benedict succeeded where the Elders had not.

  "Friends!" His voice rose above the crowd, supernaturally loud to compensate for the noise of so many different voices. There was no doubt his clear English-accented voice could be heard in strongholds all around the country. "Friends. We have defeated a terrible enemy today. But I know that this will strengthen all ties. Without the Oppressor, we will be able to return to our communities in safety and see them grow."

  Cheers erupted anew at this pronouncement. Dylan stood up next to speak as Benedict, looking grateful, stepped back.

  "We thank you all for errythin', but wow." Dylan offered a wide grin to the avid audience. "We're knackered!" This got laughs, as it was meant to. "I mean, we're just gorra go home and sleep. Mebbe forever." More laughs. Dylan lifted his hands, though technically he didn't need to wait for the laughter to die down in order to make himself heard. "So we're gorra go, and again thank you." His Scottish brogue was strong, stronger due to the extreme exhaustion. He made eye contact and nodded to several of those assembled before looking down to Ophelia to see if she had anything she wanted to add.

  "Thank you," was all she said. Like Dylan, her Scottish accent was more pronounced. "Thank you all."

  Benedict's hand found hers, and they shared a look of weary camaraderie. He said something to her that was inaudible to the others.

  There seemed nothing more to say. While the celebrations continued in earnest, the three young heroes slipped out.

  Chapter One

  At eight years old, Alixx James and Ophelia Grey were as different as two young magicians could be. Alixx came into her fire magic early, but it didn't matter. Even before that, Alixx had the fox tail and ears that indicated a likely affiliation with either fire or earth.

  Just like their mundane human counterparts, magicians looked down on those who were different. Magicians touched with the nature of their elemental animal were seen as less—less powerful, less likely to end up in important positions, just less.

  Ophelia's affiliation with air magic came early. There were no wings or scales with the magic, though Alixx and Ophelia both looked. Her first forays involved telekinesis: books, food, and furniture.

  For Alixx's tenth birthday, Ophelia greeted her at her front door with a spring storm of Alixx's beloved cherry blossoms that the two girls danced in until Alixx's disapproving mother advised it wasn't wise to put on such a display of magic in an open place where the humans might see. It was imperative at all times that magic was not revealed to those who did not have it.

  When Ophelia discovered that she could burn the edges of her books as easily as she could turn the pages with her air magic, she didn't tell anyone. People didn't have affiliations with more than one element. It hadn't happened for a hundred years. The bloodlines were too diluted or something that meant that it didn't happen anymore. Ophelia kept it a tightly guarded secret through the first two years of school. Only Alixx was her confidante.

  They shared a dorm room with only one other girl, Carmen, and waited until she was sleeping to talk. Ophelia thickened the air around them for further assurance that their conversation wouldn't be overheard.

  "Promise me you won't get angry," Ophelia said.

  "I promise. Of course I promise."

  "You're getting angry," Ophelia said, blue eyes sad.

  Alixx glared. "Of course I'm getting angry. You're the first magician in one hundred years to have more than one element specialty, and I have this." She tugged on her tail, the thing that would follow her around in life announcing to anyone with magic sight that she was different. "It isn't fair."

  It was the first fight between the two girls in the four years they'd been friends, but it wasn't a fight, really. Alixx just sat with other girls and boys at the long benches where they ate lunch. And Ophelia met Benedict and Dylan.

  Like she and Alixx, the two boys shared a dorm room. The third boy, Peter, was someone they mercilessly mocked, but he gave as good as he got most of the time. They knew from shared classes that Ophelia specialised in air, just as she knew that Benedict specialised in water, and Dylan in fire.

  The thawing of the silence between Ophelia and Alixx came one night when Ophelia was reading on her bed. Alixx crawled out of hers and crept into the bed beside Ophelia.

  "Read to me?" Alixx asked.

  Ophelia looked down at her. "What do you want me to read? It won't make any sense if I go from where I am."

  "How about you go from where the girl kn
ows that it means a lot that her best friend trusted her to tell her something no one else knows, and the girl doesn't want to lose that. Ever."

  Ophelia hugged Alixx close, putting the book aside and thickening the air around them.

  *~*~*

  Present

  Ophelia walked into the magician's bar. In England, drinking age was 18. Her heels clicked on the wooden floors, and her crop top and skinny jeans hugged her figure in a way that… Alixx wasn't sure Ophelia had ever worn clothes like this. She'd also cut and coloured her hair. It was in a short, frizzy bob, and the blonde curls had become an electric red. There was a fake piercing in her nose. Alixx hoped it was fake.

  Alixx looked up from the bar as Ophelia reached the polished wood, and pretended that it was the first time she'd spotted the other girl since she walked through the doors and into her place of work.

  "Good look," she said, giving Ophelia a quick up and down.

  "Same to you," Ophelia said, pulling out a bar stool and perching on it.

  Alixx wasn't sure what Ophelia was remarking on. Bar uniforms didn't change overly much regardless of where you worked. The black pants-and-tee combo was accompanied by a black apron tied around her waist. The ears that poked up out of her hair were unchanged from their teenage years, the pants tailored so that her tail had room to move. Her hair was still the same mousey brown cut to mid-length that it had always been.

  "What can I get you?" she asked, falling back on something easy.

  "What's the most expensive whiskey you've got?" Ophelia's gaze perused the shelves behind Alixx's head. She cocked a grin. "I don't seem to have to buy alcohol in a bar anymore, did you know?"

  The grin didn't look like she was happy. Alixx didn't comment. She didn't know about just giving Ophelia the most expensive whiskey in the bar, but she wasn't the boss of the other girl either. No. Nobody was the boss of Ophelia anymore.

  Ophelia flicked her hair from side to side as her head turned and she gazed at the other patrons of the bar. The red hair had thrown many of them off, but some of them looked at her as though there was something familiar about her. Alixx saw one of her regulars elbow another in the ribs and hiss something about the Oppressor.

  Ophelia blanched, turning her face away and back to the bar. She tried for a neutral expression by the time she met Alixx's eye again.

  "I'm afraid I'm gonna need you to be a little bit more specific," Alixx said, lowering her eyes and returning to the conversation on alcohol. It seemed safest.

  "Aw, you always knew how to take care of me," Ophelia said, swaying a little on the stool and making Alixx wonder for the first time how much Ophelia had already had to drink tonight. "Whatever you choose, I know it'll be good."

  For a brief moment, Alixx considered offering Ophelia a glass of water. It was the kind of thing she could have gotten away with during school, but she didn't know this Ophelia.

  She poured a glass of vodka, heavily watered down with cranberry juice, and hoped that would do the trick.

  The drink didn't last long.

  "Another." Ophelia slammed the glass down on the bar for all as though she were in a very different kind of establishment. And a very different person.

  Alixx clenched her jaw briefly. "Ophelia…"

  "Another!" This time, her tone that brooked no argument.

  Despite the warning, Alixx leaned forward over the bar so she could lower her voice and still be heard by her friend. "How much have you already had to drink?"

  Ophelia gave her a peculiar smile. "How about I don't answer that so you have no professional qualms about serving me more."

  Alixx stepped back. She shook her head, and it was a small, tight motion. "I'm cutting you off."

  At the same time, one of the magicians from the table that had been looking at her before, stepped up to the bar beside her.

  "You're Ophelia Grey." The sentence lifted up a little in question, but there was mostly breathless awe in his voice.

  Ophelia flashed a quick glance towards Alixx, then her shoulders eased markedly and she leaned an elbow against the bar in turning towards her admirer. "So I am," she answered, with a wide smile.

  "We owe so much to you…" The magician looked as though he hardly knew what to say.

  Very charitably, Ophelia helped him out. "Well, you could always buy me a drink. And tell me your name."

  Abruptly, Alixx understood what the look sent her way had been about.

  The magician looked her way as though seeing her for the first time. "I'd like to buy the lady a drink." Of course, as Alixx had already cleared away Ophelia's last drink, there was no evidence remaining of what she'd already been drinking. That didn't seem to bother the magician as he turned back to Ophelia. "And I'm Markus. Markus Frisco."

  He held out a hand. Ophelia rolled her eyes but she took his hand and used it as a way to bring them closer to one another before she kissed his cheek intimately.

  Alixx rolled her eyes, managing to make it look very derogatory.

  "You heard the man," Ophelia said. She turned to face Alixx, her forehead still resting against Markus. He looked so happy that he hardly noticed Alixx's expression.

  Alixx lifted her eyebrows and maintained eye contact for the long, long seconds it took her to pour first the vodka, then the cranberry, into Ophelia's glass.

  Maybe it was Alixx's clear disapproval. Maybe it was Markus' blind admiration. In either case, he offered Ophelia his arm and Ophelia bounced off the bar stool—albeit unsteadily as she hit the floor—before they crossed the floor to Markus' table.

  Alixx kept her eyes on them for a while, but there were other patrons who demanded her attention and at some point, when Alixx looked up, the two of them were gone.

  Chapter Two

  Ophelia became such a regular fixture in Alixx's bar over the next few nights that her absence was immediately noticeable. One night wasn't so much on its own but, when it came to almost midnight for a second night in a row, Alixx grabbed her jacket off the hook behind the bar.

  "I'm going to need to go early," she called out to her boss, a magician who was serving patrons on the other side of the bar.

  "Wait—what?" He looked up at her briefly, consternation lowering his brows at the inconvenience.

  Alixx was already at the large wooden door, pulling it open. "I'll be back for my shift as normal tomorrow night."

  As she walked out, the words followed her on a current of air magic: "If you still have your shift…"

  It was said as a threat, but Alixx knew he wouldn't let her go. She was too good at her job; had been doing it too long for him to find someone to replace her. That would mean training someone to replace her. But, just in case, she'd be sure to explain the situation to him the next evening.

  She couldn't have pinpointed what exactly it was about not seeing Ophelia two nights running that worried her. One could have seen it as a good thing. Perhaps Ophelia had worked it out of her system, whatever it was riding her in the aftermath of the three-year war against the Oppressor. Perhaps she was taking the time to take care of her liver. Perhaps she was spending time with Benedict and Dylan.

  Yet Alixx knew it was none of these things. She'd been too hard on Ophelia, too obviously a dampener on what Ophelia wanted to do with her life and decisions. And Ophelia had now taken those decisions and ended up living them elsewhere.

  There was no way that Alixx could simply walk to every magician bar in Inverness and hope for the best. What about all the homes in which Ophelia could be doing the same things? Alixx had to be smart about resolving the feeling of dread unfurling in her stomach.

  Every element had its own specialised locating spell. All magicians carried some mundane props on their person, for those times it was imperative to practice magic where there would be humans who might see. Alixx had a couple of tea-light candles in her backpack. A flame in the palm of her hand pointing the direction in which she should walk would be far more noticeable than a tea-light candle whose flame was doing the sa
me thing.

  As she went through the words of the spell in her head, her will focused. It took her less than ten seconds to create light, a further five to divine a direction she should be walking in. The spell was the quickest she could do with such limited resources. Alixx just hoped that Ophelia was still in Inverness; otherwise Alixx could be walking all night and into the following day, still finding nothing.

  Thankfully, the spell soon brought her up to the front of a bar she didn't recognise, well within Inverness' city limits. Alixx snuffed out the spell, dropping the candle back into her bag. There were dozens of motorbikes outside of an otherwise mundane establishment. She looked at the crowd of bikes outside of the entrance, two bikes deep in some places. But that was nothing when compared to the cloud of cigarette smoke from the humans standing just outside the door, smoke that was thick enough that it was difficult to see exactly where the door was.

  The interior wasn't so loud that Alixx couldn't hear herself. From her admittedly limited view on such things, Alixx had thought of bikers as tall old men with beer bellies, long greying hair, and dark sunglasses, mostly riding Harley Davidsons. A two second glance around the pub showed that the only preconception Alixx had been right about was the leather. There was lots of it. Pants, gloves, jackets, waistcoats. Some jackets were interspersed with patches. But that was about the only thing that these people had in common.

  They were sometimes tall, some short; some old, some young. Some with long hair, some shaved bald. Alixx had been right about the bellies on some of them, though that seemed more about the biology of middle-aged men than anything to do with riding a bike. Several of them were women. More than a few of them looked like they were around her age. None of them were glaring at her or in any other way seeming hostile. Mostly, they were ignoring her as if she didn't belong, but wasn't a threat.

  She didn't belong here. But neither did Ophelia.

  There was exactly one magician inside this establishment, other than Alixx, and that was Ophelia. Finally, finally, she set eyes on her.