The New Magic - The Revelation of Jonah McAllister - Landon Wark (bill gates best books TXT) 📗

running into the same wall over and over again. Witchcraft and sorcery was amazing, but at its core it was power, a new one, but in reality no different than the first spear or rifle. Whoever wielded it was powerful, maybe the most powerful person on the planet, but at the end of the day they were still just a person. And a person was not anything without will.

Humanity would be perfect if it weren't for that pesky human nature.

Yuri pulled out the small key ring he kept in his right pocket, pulling his phone out of the opposite side. As his fingers flicked automatically through his keys he opened the remote camera app and spooled through the two cameras he had positioned in the apartment. The red border of the kitchen camera indicated motion inside, but as he glanced at the image he recognized the shape inside. She was waiting up for him, as always.

The lock on the security door was like a rabbit's foot kept in a gambler's pocket. Maybe it worked and maybe it didn't, but it made the user feel a little more secure. Like maybe there was some sort of artifact from God's own closet that could bend the laws of probability for him.

Yuri smiled at the idea as he fit the key into the lock. Locks would need a major overhaul as well.

As usual there were a couple of people in the stairs. Maybe selling drugs, maybe selling sex. Both? Both. Only a few weeks prior he might have thought about circling around to the back and using the rickety rungs of the fire escape. Now he didn't care so much. He had the power now. And eventually he would deal with them.

There were other things to deal with first.

Living in a slum because of your connections had a way of grating on a man. Especially when there was no explanation given. In the Han dynasty they would kill your parents, your brothers and sisters and your children. While not foolish enough to believe he had it worse, there was something... elegant about the finality of it. Hell, even in the old days they would throw your family in the gulag with you. These days they just slapped the names on a list and left you to starve in a glorious capitalist ghetto.

He opened the ratty apartment door and turned on the bare lightbulb hanging over the entrance. He crossed the mottled floor into the kitchen where she sat, huddled over a steaming teacup like an old beggar woman.

"I'm home, ma," Yuri said as he pulled the still-hot kettle from the stove and a cup from the door-less cupboard.

He kissed her dry, straw-like hair as he walked over to the counter and ladled a single spoonful into his mug.

She was a tough woman, his old mom. Even the past few years hadn't been enough to break her. Women like her didn't break, they just got worn down... eroded. Tapping the last drops of tea off the spoon he had to look again to make sure she hadn't fallen asleep at the table.

"You're out too long." Her words answered his question for him. "It's just like with your brother."

At first it had been rare, her mentioning him, but lately whenever Yuri started stretching his wings for a little more independence his sibling came up all the time. Like a cautionary tale for little boys who don't obey their mothers. And he had begun to form calluses wherever she had rubbed him with the stories.

If only she knew where he had been. But, he had decided it was better that she didn't know. Best she didn't have any supernatural worries to pile on top of her mundane ones.

"I've been looking," he said.

"Pah!" she replied. "We all know where that fool ended up. Some cell in a prison somewhere."

"I'm not looking for him," Yuri said. He didn't exactly know why he was explaining his intentions to her. Maybe he was asking permission. Maybe he wanted approval that would never be forthcoming. She blamed herself, he had come to realize a short while ago. And whatever stupid pride she still had would never let her hold anyone else liable. A mother was the world to her boy, in blame and in praise.

"Then who?"

"The ones responsible, ma."

His mother laughed into her tea. The throaty crackle of an old woman.

"And you what? Kill the judge? Kill the lawyers? For prosecuting a boy stupid enough to smuggle that trash?"

Maybe he thought.

"And then your brother is going to come home?"

"If we tear down the prisons," Yuri said.

"Who is 'we'?"

He shook his head. "Forget it, ma. I don't expect you to understand."

"You think I don't understand? That I don't want the men who threw Christoph away to feel even a small bit of this?" She motioned to paint peeling off the walls. "But what are you going to do? Throw your life away trying to drag some remorse out of them. You can't eat remorse, Yuri."

Yuri whispered one of the words that the woman, Aegera or whatever she wished to be called, had given to him and felt the temperature of the tea in his hand drop by a few degrees.

"Yeah, ma. I know."

Jonah sat on the edge of his bed, head in his hands, eyes staring out between his fingers at the books surrounding him. They were not his usual blue notebooks, the ones he wrote down the words that came to him through the hours of study he had put in at the house, now a continent away. Those were still present, but shoved away into a corner. He found he had less and less use for them as time dragged by. These were all black.

They were all the important things. Things that worked. They were all he thought about