The End of Magic Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE ECHO PARK COVEN NOVELS

  “A dark and compelling page-turner.”

  —Kelley Armstrong, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Darkness Absolute

  “Great characters, great story, great setting—Amber Benson’s got it. Get it for yourself.”

  —John Scalzi, New York Times bestselling author of The Collapsing Empire

  “Dark, delicious, and devilishly intricate. A spellbinding winner.”

  —Seanan McGuire, New York Times bestselling author of Magic for Nothing

  “The Witches of Echo Park is dark, thoughtful urban fantasy about destiny, the ties that bind us, and the power of women who rely on themselves—and each other—for strength. A fantastic read.”

  —Christopher Golden, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Ararat

  “[An] urban fantasy series that deftly mixes magic and the modern world.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Multitalented Benson returns with a story of sisterhood, magic, and secrets . . . Captivating.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “[Benson] is as talented as a writer as she is as an actor . . . An interesting and dark urban fantasy world filled with magic, secrets, and shocking twists and turns!”

  —Kings River Life Magazine

  Ace Books by Amber Benson

  The Calliope Reaper-Jones Novels

  DEATH’S DAUGHTER

  CAT’S CLAW

  SERPENT’S STORM

  HOW TO BE DEATH

  THE GOLDEN AGE OF DEATH

  The Echo Park Coven Novels

  THE WITCHES OF ECHO PARK

  THE LAST DREAM KEEPER

  THE END OF MAGIC

  ACE

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2017 by Benson Entertainment, Inc.

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  ACE is a registered trademark and the A colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Benson, Amber, 1977– author.

  Title: The end of magic / Amber Benson.

  Description: First Edition. | New York : Ace, 2017. | Series: An Echo Park Coven novel ; 3

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017002519 (print) | LCCN 2017006709 (ebook) | ISBN 9780425268698 (paperback) | ISBN 9781101630563 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Witches—Fiction. | Magic—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Fantasy / Contemporary. | FICTION / Urban Life. | FICTION / Contemporary Women. | GSAFD: Occult fiction. | Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3602.E685 E53 2017 (print) | LCC PS3602.E685 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017002519

  First Edition: May 2017

  Cover illustration by Larry Rostant

  Cover design by Diana Kolsky

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise for the Echo Park Coven Novels

  Ace Books by Amber Benson

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  The Book of The Flood

  Lyse

  Lizbeth

  Arrabelle

  Devandra

  Desmond

  Daniela

  Lizbeth

  Lyse

  The Book of The Flood

  Niamh

  Arrabelle

  Lizbeth

  Daniela

  Devandra

  Lyse

  Evan

  The Book of The Flood

  Arrabelle

  Lizbeth

  Daniela

  Hessika

  Devandra

  Niamh

  Desmond

  Daniela

  Lyse

  Evan

  Eleanora

  Lizbeth

  Lyse

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

  —Daniel 12:2

  The Book of The Flood

  In the beginning there was magic. It laced the world together, binding its many pieces into their proper place and maintaining balance. It filled the universe with a sense of the extraordinary, turning journeys into quests, learning into power, life into destiny.

  But change is as inevitable as it is necessary. So the days of magic’s dominance waned, and the world shifted, swapping the variables from one side of the equation to the other. The disparate pieces of the old world lost their shape and were torn asunder. Humanity shucked its innocence and magic was discarded. The sense of wonder that once suffused the world was slowly extinguished, leaving a darker void in its wake. A sense of complacency rose up to cradle us and we gave in, settled for eschewing the old ways in favor of the new.

  To our horror, the world became a place of soulless evil and corruption. One in which we chose to bow down before an altar dedicated wholly to ourselves . . .

  —Dawn 1:3

  The Book of The Flood

  Lyse

  One powerful dream that went out across the world and reawakened the slumbering power of magic. One coven of blood sisters—or witches, as they’d been called before the word took on such negative connotations—standing against a Machiavellian syndicate called The Flood. One woman who didn’t know what the hell she was doing but who’d been thrust into the middle of a battle between good and evil.

  This was Lyse MacAllister: a woman who had straddled the line of living up to her responsibility and shirking it . . . choosing the former. She was the uninitiated woman. The unwitting master of a coven that stood between the world remaining as it was and being destroyed under The Flood’s new world order. She was woefully unprepared for the job, but, in the end, it kind of hadn’t mattered.

  Lyse had seen what The Flood was capable of, had experienced their evil firsthand. They had captured and tortured many of her blood sisters, using up the women’s powers to further their own nefarious ends. Lyse and her coven mates had freed the poor wretches they’d found in The Flood’s secret underground lair, but the damage had been done and many of the women were now only shells of their former selves. A human body could only endure so much—and to be caged like an animal, experimented on, and have your powers drained from you like tree sap . . . ? Well, it was merely a matter of time before you ceased to function. Before everything that made you a person was sucked out and you were left an empty husk. No longer the glorious and unique human being you once were. And these atrocities were carried out against young girls, too—children, really, who had just begun to move toward womanhood.

  Lyse likened what she and her coven mates—Arrabelle, Evan, and Niamh—discovered in The
Flood’s subterranean warehouse laboratory to the World War II horrors of Josef Mengele’s “experimentations” at Auschwitz. The inhumanity they’d found there had chilled Lyse and the others to their very cores.

  Evan and Arrabelle were trained herbalists, but their magical gifts could do little to help. They’d done what they could, helping Lyse and Niamh free the women and children—and soothing those who seemed somewhat cognizant of what was happening—but most of the victims were so far gone that “fixing” them was not on the table.

  Evan had been the first one to realize that they needed help to get the victims to safety, and so he’d encouraged Lyse to reach out to the few blood sisters that he trusted, those who’d stayed on the fringes of blood sister society and hadn’t been co-opted by the corruption inside the Greater Council, the governing body that presided over the world’s witch covens. After Lyse and her coven mates had discovered a mole inside the Greater Council’s ranks, anyone associated with the Council had become subject to suspicion. And Lyse doubted that Desmond Delay—the man she’d only recently learned was her grandfather—was the only bad apple.

  She didn’t want to think about him, didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of taking up space in her mind. He’d blown her world wide open when he’d informed her of her parentage and now she felt sullied, tainted by having his blood running in her veins. He’d made her question who she was and where she’d come from. Made her question the tenuous relationship she’d forged with the woman who’d raised her, her grandmother Eleanora. For now she was ignoring all the bad feelings that bubbled up inside her, but she knew that one day soon she would be forced to unpack them, possibly forfeiting the leadership of a coven she’d only recently accepted her place in.

  “You’re lost in your head,” her coven mate Niamh—a diviner of great talent—said, sweeping her long dark hair into a bun at the nape of her neck.

  Lyse could only agree with Niamh. She knew she’d disconnected from the present moment. Knew she’d been cast adrift in her own thoughts as she’d tried to process all the pain and suffering and fear she’d experienced in The Flood’s underground laboratory.

  “Sorry,” Lyse said. “You’re right. It’s all a bit overwhelming.”

  The others had followed her lead, shepherding the victims into a safe area, then heading topside with her by way of a bank of industrial-sized elevators that served as the only entrance and exit into the bowels of the mountain—leaving The Flood’s underground labyrinthine research facility behind them physically if not emotionally. Now they were in the Nevada desert, looking to Lyse’s continued leadership to get them the hell out of there.

  “It’s a lot,” Arrabelle said, resting a hand on Lyse’s shoulder, but Lyse could feel her friend’s body shudder as she turned to look back at the bank of elevators that led to the lab. “We all feel it. This place has bad juju—evil things happened here . . . even before The Flood took it over. It’s full of nasty vibes.”

  Lyse knew Arrabelle was convinced the place had once housed a secret U.S. military compound, and Lyse had to agree that there was something cold and clinical, and vaguely government-issue, about the facility.

  “You know we’re not far from where Area 51 is purported to be,” Evan said, joining Lyse, Niamh, and Arrabelle’s conversation. “Who knows what the government had in there before The Flood got their hands on it?”

  The old mine shaft that housed the facility was in the mountains bordering Groom Lake, Nevada—maybe Arrabelle and Evan weren’t too far off the mark.

  “I’m gonna reach out to the Eagles if you guys are still all right with it.”

  Lyse nodded and watched as Evan took out his cell phone. There was little small talk. He quickly got to the heart of the matter, asking his friends to send reinforcements who would be prepped and ready to help care for the women and children Lyse’s coven had rescued.

  “I’m going to take a walk,” Lyse told Arrabelle.

  She needed some space to think.

  “We’re on it,” Arrabelle said, and nodded.

  Lyse turned to go, but then she felt Niamh’s long fingers encircling her upper arm.

  “I wanted to tell you that we did the right thing,” Niamh said, a haunted look in her eyes. “Now no one else will die like my sister.”

  They’d arrived too late to save Niamh’s identical twin, Laragh—who’d been kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by The Flood. Lyse knew that Niamh had been damaged in some visceral way by her sister’s death and that the loss of the psychic connection between them—the same connection that had helped guide Niamh and the others to the location of the secret facility—was ripping Niamh apart.

  “I wish we’d gotten here sooner,” Lyse said, filled with guilt by the loss of the blood sisters they hadn’t been able to save.

  “Me, too.”

  Niamh let her go, but not before giving Lyse’s arm a firm squeeze. It was as if she were saying . . . It’s not your fault. But Lyse didn’t believe her . . . or anyone else.

  She gave Niamh a quick nod, then stepped out onto the uneven desert floor. She felt Niamh’s gaze pinned to her back as she stumbled along the rocky terrain, but she didn’t look back. Embarrassed by the tears that blinded her vision.

  She was feeling unsure of herself, and she needed some space in order to think, to figure out what their next move would be and what the future might bring them.

  She moved farther away from the others, taking one of the paths that led away from the mouth of the mine shaft toward the dusty brown horizon. She was so happy to be aboveground again she didn’t even mind the heat as she walked, watching the blue sky shift into late-afternoon streaks of burnt orange and dark indigo. She was dirty, sweaty, and she could smell herself. She realized she had no idea how long she had been held captive by The Flood before she escaped and hooked up with the others, but the last time she’d showered was at least twenty-four hours in the past.

  The rubber soles of her shoes offered little protection from the jagged stones she was trying to maneuver over, so she stopped and hauled herself up onto an outcropping of beige rock. She felt exhausted, both mentally and physically, her tired feet aching from too much time spent standing upright. Hopping over a crevice in the outcropping of stone, she saw flecks of greenery growing in the shaded dirt beneath the rocks.

  Even when things look darkest, life goes on, she thought, then tore her gaze away from the growing things to gently make her way over to the edge. She plopped down on the warm stone, the heat radiating up through the seat of her black jeans, and closed her eyes.

  She lifted her face, catching some of the dwindling sunlight. She tried to relax the kinks out of her shoulders and back, but it was no use. She felt tight as a knot, her whole body aching from the last few hours. She let her mind drift, remembering all the awful things she’d endured: She’d watched a man die—a man she’d been in love with. She’d let down her coven mates, especially empath Daniela and Dream Keeper Lizbeth. She’d allowed Desmond Delay—the man she was now forced to acknowledge as her grandfather (the thought made her skin prickle)—to escape without taking any responsibility for his heinous crimes.

  She was a shitty coven master, and even though she hadn’t asked for the gig, she still felt the weight of the position pressing down on her. Yet she was only one person. There was only so much she could do. For someone else, those words might have absolved them from guilt, but for Lyse, they did nothing. As far as she was concerned, they were a cop-out, and they did zero to assuage the anger she directed at herself for failing to be a better leader.

  She opened her mouth and screamed, the sound raw and terrifying as it ripped itself from her throat. It left her gasping when it was done, but she ignored the burning in her throat and repeated the action one more time. She felt like there was some kind of murderous poison bubbling up from deep inside her and the only way to get it out was to scream. So she did—again and ag
ain until the scream became a sob and then she was forced to let the tears flow. She didn’t think crying made her weak. More the opposite. With tears came acceptance and the will to go on in the face of utter impossibility.

  Because Lyse finally understood—sitting on that outcropping of rocks in “the middle of nowhere” Nevada—that the battle she and her blood sisters were entrenched in would probably be the end of them and of everyone they knew and loved.

  She and her coven mates were on what amounted to a suicide mission.

  As this realization blossomed inside her, it took up the space where fear and anger had been hiding, filling her soul with a sense of righteous purpose.

  So she died doing what was right? Well, then . . . that was just gonna be the way it went down. And if she could protect her blood sisters from the same fate, she would—but she was comfortable with the knowledge that death loomed large in her future.

  Today, she decided, was as good a day as any to die for what she believed in and knew to be right.

  • • •

  She came back to find the others crowded around Evan. Well, to be more precise: Evan’s phone.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  Arrabelle, with her aquiline face and smoldering brown eyes, was the only one to look up. She’d stripped down to a tank top, and even in the fading afternoon light, her toned brown arms stood out in stark contrast to the cream fabric. Her look spoke volumes to Lyse.

  “Shit,” Lyse murmured.

  “Yeah, shit’s the word,” Arrabelle said, her words coming out in a whisper—as if by keeping her voice quiet, she could stop whatever she was about to tell Lyse from being true. “You think the Inquisition was bad news? What happened today makes the Roman Catholic Church look like a bunch of witch lovers.”

  As Lyse got closer, she could see that Niamh’s face was wet with tears, her shoulders heaving as she cried. Even Evan, who was the most stoic of the three, looked shaken.

  “Tell me,” Lyse said, a deep sense of wrong eating a hole in the pit of her stomach.