“J-Jamie,” stammered the Boy.

  “Ian,” said Ian, “Ian Blackwing of—oh, never mind.” Ian looked out of the hazy sphere at the imps. They seemed repulsed by the shield. They were fluttering around each other, screeching in rage, but they wouldn’t come near. “You’re protecting us with holy energy?”

  “Y-yeah.” The Boy huffed, his eyelids drooped, and the hazy shield became more hazy.

  “Whoa! Hey now. Keep awake, you’re doing great.” Ian considered their options. On the one hand, they were cornered. And his own spells weren’t doing much against the demonic swarm. And there really wasn’t anything on the other hand. “Try throwing that energy to blast them.”

  “I don’t know how to do that!”

  “You don’t—you’ve got a shield of holy energy. When did you learn to do that?”

  “Um, about twenty seconds ago.”

  “…just now.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What else can you do with magic?”

  “I’m a trainee healer.”

  “And?”

  “And that’s it.”

  Wonderful. “Well, if you can do that, then you can manipulate holy energy. And blasting with magic is easy. If you can magically manipulate a type of energy, you just do this.” Ian tossed a spark of magic at the imps. One of them vanished in a puff of purple smoke. “So I guess I could just do that… a lot of times.”

  Jamie wavered and sank onto a chair. Even if Ian wouldn’t run out of magical energy long before he’d defeated them all that way, Jamie was never going to keep the shield up long enough for him to do it. “Stay with me Jamie, you’re going to have to do this. I can show you how, but I’m not a holy mage. I can do fire and lightning and raw magical energy, and—”

  “And?”

  “Just those three,” Ian lied, “And all of those generally hit harder than your magic. Holy mages aren’t known for offensive magic. But these things are vulnerable to it, so you’ll be a lot more effective than I am. Come on, give it a try.”

  Jamie halfheartedly lifted a hand and pointed at the imps. They jeered and laughed at him. “They’re just waiting for the shield to fail!” he said, his voice desperate and cracking. How long had they left this kid down here? When had he last slept?

  “Yeah, you’re going to have to…” Ian’s voice trailed off. He didn’t like this. It would only give them one chance to get it right, but one chance was better than the current no chance. “Hold out your hands like this.” Jamie imitated him. “Now, close your eyes. Focus on the magical energy around you. It’s coming from you. It’s your own power. Can you feel it? Feel it in your hands. Imagine it’s a physical object you can grab, like maybe a curtain around us, or something along those lines.’

  Jamie did as he instructed. “I think I can feel it. Warm and tingly? But somehow cold at the same time?”

  “No experience with this type of energy, kid, but if you feel something that’s probably it. Okay. Now this’ll be the scary part. You’re going to need to rip that curtain down, pull all of that energy back into yourself, into your heart.”

  “They’ll kill us!” Jamie’s eyes opened, wet with tears.

  “Not if you kill them faster!” Ian said firmly, “Pull that energy back into yourself and then hurl it back at them. This isn’t a proper spell—I don’t know any holy spells, so I couldn’t help you with that—but you don’t need one for this. It’s your energy. You can redirect it into a different form. Pull it back, throw it at them.”

  “Stand behind me, then,” Jamie choked out, “so I can do it.”

  “No. I’m going to do what I can to slow them down, give you as much time as I can.”

  “But I’ll hit you!”

  “Yes. But I’m well enough protected against magic, and you just aren’t that powerful. And I’m not a demon. They’re individually weak and vulnerable to this magic. It won’t take you much to destroy them. Hit them all at once and you win.”

  “But—but they’ll get to you!”

  “Probably,” admitted Ian. He didn’t have a lot of faith in the Boy’s ability to, well, wield his faith. This was going to go poorly.

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  Jamie coughed, hiccupped. Was he sobbing? “You’re trying to sacrifice—”

  “Heck no!” Ian snapped, “This is purely tactical! Getting out of here alive is my only goal right now. You’re my best chance of doing that. I’ll protect you so you can save me.”

  Several of the imps had ventured closer to the shield and poked at it with toes and tail. The sizzling burn was a lot less dramatic than Ian would have hoped. “Your shield is getting weaker. Do it while you still have enough magical energy left at all.”

  “But Ian, I—”

  “NOW, Jamie!” The young acolyte took several more gasping breaths, and the field of white energy was pulled away. The swarm of imps cackled and crowed and whooped as they swooped to attack. Ian twirled his staff, then planted it firmly against the ground, unleashing lightning into them and trying to deflect their attention onto him.

  Unfortunately, this worked well. They were all over him, their claws and stingers tearing at his sleeves and jabbing at his fingers. And then, with a sound like the squeal of skin across glass and in a flash of blinding light, they were gone. Ian felt the punch of the magical blast. It hit him a little harder than he would have hoped, but he stayed on his feet. “Ouch,” Ian said, “Good job kid, you got.. you got’em you… you did—”

  Ian found he was suddenly having a lot of trouble stringing words together, and his tongue felt too large for his mouth so he could barely say them in any case.

  “The venom!” gasped Jamie, looking at the wounds on Ian’s arms and hands. “I—I don’t think I can do any more healing magic.” Well crap. All that just to die and save the kid. “But I do also know some of the non-magical healing arts. Let me get some supplies. He dashed out of the room, and Ian tried to sink into a chair and fell onto the floor near a chair instead. That was fine. He could just lie here until he died.

  “Ah, there y’are, Mr. Blackwing.”

  “Oh good,” Ian groaned, “glad you could make it, Captain.”

  Montague nudged him with her foot. “Gonna by layin’ there long?”

  “That is my plan, at present.”

  Jamie hurried back, almost running into Montague, who stood aside for him. “Oh, uh, excuse me miss—”

  “Captain. Captain Marjorie Montague.”

  He didn’t answer, busy applying medicines to Ian’s scratches. They felt better immediately, and he sat up. He did still feel a little groggy. “That’s not magic?”

  “Oh, the bandages are infused with a little magic, to make the healing faster. So I guess it kind of is, a little.”

  “Hm.” Ian’s foot nudged something, and Montague laughed.

  “That’s never what you’re looking for, Mr. Blackwing?”

  Picking it up, Ian stared at the small, hard object. It was blue. It took a moment for his eyes to focus on it. “It is! The Sapphire Stone. This is mine!”

  “Y-yours, sir?” Jamie asked.

  “This is mine! It was supposed to be in your vaults. Sister Miranda was keeping it for me.”

  “Oh, I, uh, I didn’t realize it was anything special. It was near the book I was supposed to be researching from. I took it to use it as a, um, a paper weight…” Jamie’s voice trailed off as Ian glared at him. “To, um, keep the book open It’s a very old book. It keeps turning back to a page in the middle where the spine is broken, so I, um, needed something to hold the pages down.”

  Ian’s eyes twitched towards the old book spilled on the floor, lying on top of several pages that had come loose. The gold lettering on the spine was peeling off, but he could still make out the title: On the Art of Redemption. “Redemption?”

  “Th-the best way to deal with villains is to get them working with you for a common good.”

  “Pfft.” Montague didn’t restrain her laughter. Ian just scowled.

  “You can t-take the stone, sir.”

  “I shall be. Since it is mine.”

  “O-of cour—of course,” Jamie stammered, stepping back from him, “Of course sir, it’s yours, and it’s yours to take. You’re, um, feeling better than?”

  “Huh? Oh. Yeah, good work kid.” The feeling had entirely returned to his feet, and Ian stood. “Great job, actually.” He shooed Montague towards the door. “But now we’re not in peril and we’ve got what we came for, so let’s go.”

  “Thought y’took a job down here?”

  “Who cares? I got what I came for, and I almost died doing it.”

  “Y’do lose a lot of fights, Mr. Blackwing. You should really work on getting stronger. You’re a mage. Practice yer battle magic.”

  “Yes, fine, move.”

  “B’sides, don’t skip out on yer pay.”

  “You care about being paid?”

  “I care about getting money. D’ya have plans to sack the place?”

  Jamie looked startled, his eyes flicking from Ian to Montague in alarm, but he kept his mouth shut. Figuratively; it was actually hanging open.

  “No.”

  “And it’s not a place we’re going to rob without a plan. But we have an option where they give us money.” Montague drew her blade and nodded once, as though it were settled. “Ye’ve half done the job already, and we’re already here. Let’s just finish it and collect our reward. And y’need the practice an’ all.”

  There was a long, low hiss, and Jamie’s voice cried out for him, “Ian!” Ian and Montague looked back at Jamie. The saw the bat-like wings spread out over his head, the claws digging into his hair, as the terrified look on his face as that long tail curled around his neck, the stinger pressed into the his throat, just off-center.

  “Guess you missed one, kid,” said Ian.

  “Master Blackwing,” hissed the imp, “your betrayal has been noted, your chance to stand with a holy acolyte of the church against Hellish powers.”

  “A squad of imps is hardly a ‘Hellish power,’ and they attacked me! I didn’t ‘work with’ the kid, I needed him to get out of here alive. Which I’m doing now. Do you have something to say?”

  “You’d better listen well, or I will sting the Boy,” hissed the imp, “Do you know how to use those medicines?”

  “Well, one of them is a topical anti-venom, applied to the bandage. I was here when he used it.”

  “…d’ya know which one, Mr. Blackwing?” asked Montague.

  Ian considered the case of healer’s supplies. “Not in the slightest.”

  The imp cackled victoriously, while Jamie’s eyes were once again wet with tears. “Then you couldn’t save him. Do as I say or I kill the Boy, then. We need your help with our ritual, Master Blackwing.”

  There was silence for a long moment, finally broken by Montague. “Who is this kid, anyway?”

  “I don’t really know him,” Ian answered.

  “Don’t you leave here,” shrieked the imp, “or the Boy dies.”

  Ian considered this for a moment. “Okay,” he said. He resumed shooing Montague out. “Let’s go, then.”