The Magic Collector Read online

  The Magic Collector

  Books by Clayton Taylor Wood:

  The Runic Series:

  Runic Awakening

  Runic Revelation

  Runic Vengeance

  Runic Revolt

  The Fate of Legends Series

  Hunter of Legends

  Seeker of Legends

  Destroyer of Legends

  Magic of Havenwood Series

  The Magic Collector

  The Magic Collector

  Book I in the Magic of Havenwood Series

  Clayton Taylor Wood

  Copyright ©2019 by Clayton Taylor Wood.

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Published by Clayton T. Wood.

  ISBN: 978-1-948497-97-8

  Cover designed by James T. Egan, Bookfly Design, LLC

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Special thanks to my wife, an endless supply of inspiration and support. And to all our muses, who hide in the strangest of places, whispering magic into our ears.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  The Magic Collector

  Prologue

  Ayear after his young son Xander’s death, a painter set about to do something terrible.

  He set his old wooden easel in the center of his studio, a good-sized room on the second floor of his home. A home once filled with love and a beautiful wife, with friends that visited almost daily. Now it was abandoned. Everyone else had moved on after Xander’s death.

  Everyone but him.

  The painter gathered his paints and paintbrushes, mixing his colors carefully. Then he placed a large canvas on the easel, and got to work.

  He outlined a shadowy head, then a body. A hand stretching out, reaching for him…even as it fell away, deeper into the canvas. Then deep, dark blue water that filled the entire canvas, save for the very bottom. On this he painted the edge of a wooden raft, slick with puddles of water.

  And in the reflections of these puddles, he painted children running toward the edge of the raft, faces struck with desperation…and horror.

  At the very surface of the water, around the shadowy figure reaching for him, he painted violent ripples that expanded outward. As if something had just plunged beneath the surface.

  The painter stopped, the pain too unbearable to continue.

  He went to the small window in his studio then, one overlooking a wide expanse of backyard. And beyond that, a lake. Moonlight splashed over the water in ghostly silver ripples, the sun having long since buried itself below the horizon. He lowered his chin to his chest, closing his eyes.

  I’m sorry son.

  Tears trickled down his cheeks, dripping onto his paint-smudged shirt. He turned back to the painting, walking up to it and stretching his hand out to the figure reaching for him. If he’d only been a minute earlier, he could have…

  Stop it.

  He took a deep breath in, centering himself. Then he put brush to canvas, forging onward.

  He filled in the dark figure’s details. An eight-year-old boy’s bare chest, a pair of blue shorts. Skinny legs and bare feet. A head of short brown hair, large brown eyes.

  Frightened eyes. Desperate, filled with terror…and hope.

  The painter almost stopped again, his guts twisted with grief. More tears blurred his vision, and he wiped them away, pushing past his feelings. No…using them. He painted as if possessed, the story of the painting flowing from his heart and through his brush, so that it might find life on his canvas.

  A mouth open in a silent scream, bubbles of air rising from it in a horrible torrent. Life-giving air leaving the boy, rising to the surface even as he sank deeper into the deadly lake.

  The painter cried out then, a tortured sound that filled the studio. But still he painted, the strokes at times angry, then bitter. Loving, then guilty. Every stroke a memory, an emotion. Every layer of paint a layer of his soul.

  And then, at long last, as the sky outside began to brighten, the sun promising to peek above the waters of the lake any moment now, the terrible deed was done.

  The painter stood before his work, studying the painting carefully. His son Xander, reaching out to him, fingers seeming to leap off of the canvas. A painting so vibrant it almost seemed real.

  He stared at his son’s face, twisted with horror, desperate to be saved…and extended one hand toward his son’s, reaching for the boy. His fingertips touched the canvas, pressing against it. He blinked in surprise, not expecting the resistance, and withdrew his hand.

  It’s not real.

  He stared at the boy’s face, that angelic face. A face burned into his memory. Trusting that his father would always be there, that if anything bad happened, daddy would save him. But daddy hadn’t been there. Daddy hadn’t saved him.

  The painter’s eyes went to the bottom right of the painting, at the surface of the raft. Then they dropped to the palette in his left hand…and to a fine-tipped paintbrush lying on the floor nearby.

  He swallowed in a dry throat, his heart starting to race.

  It’s not real, he reminded himself.

  But he found himself kneeling down, reaching for the paintbrush. His hands trembled as he stood, dipping the tip of the brush into the white splotch of paint on his palette.

  He faced the canvas, his whole body quivering now, his heart hammering in his chest.

  Taking a step forward, he leaned over, pressing the tip of the brush against the canvas. Before he could change his mind, he cried out, signing his name in quick, sure strokes, each letter perfectly executed.

  A gentle breeze caressed him from behind.

  He stood then, staring at the painting. And in that moment, he didn’t care about the consequences. Didn’t care about what might happen to him. He felt a sudden sense of peace…a feeling he
hadn’t felt since…

  The painter smiled, reaching out to the painting again, his fingertips touching the canvas.

  And passing right through it.

  He felt a familiar warmth in his fingers, spreading to his hand as he plunged it into the painting. A warm, pulsing sensation, along with a subtle tingling, as if his hand had started to fall asleep. His wrist vanished into the painting, and then he felt his hand touch something warm and soft.

  A palm.

  He drew a sharp breath in, then pressed his own palm against it, marveling at the resistance. Then he hesitated, but only for a moment. Reaching in further, he went past the palm, feeling his fingers wrap around a small, bony wrist.

  He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath in…and pulled.

  Chapter 1

  BAM!

  Bella jerked upright with a start, her eyes snapping open. She realized she was sitting in her desk at school…and that a hand had slammed down on her algebra book, jolting her out of a particularly pleasant daydream. Bella stared at the hand, following it upward. A thin, almost skeletal wrist. A black sleeve. A thin, wrinkled neck. And the face of a dreadfully thin, middle-aged woman staring down at her, pale lips pursed in disapproval.

  “What did I tell you about daydreaming in my class, Miss Brown?” the woman inquired. Bella stood up straighter, warmth spreading across her cheeks. Everyone in the class was staring at her…and a few were snickering.

  “Sorry Mrs. Pittersworth,” she mumbled. Mrs. Pittersworth lifted her hand from Bella’s book, crossing her arms over her chest. She held Bella’s gaze for a moment longer, then turned away, walking back to the front of the room. Bella let go of a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, wiping sweaty palms on her thighs. She felt the eyes of her classmates still on her, and pretended to ignore them, glancing at the clock on the wall.

  She sighed, groaning inwardly.

  For while her daydream had seemed to go on for hours – a silly fantasy involving a mushroom forest and a sparkling lake, with dragons flying in the air all around her – only five minutes had passed in the real world. And there were far too many more to go before the last class of the day was over.

  Tick, tock.

  Bella stared at the black hands of the clock on the wall as Mrs. Pittersworth droned on. The hands made no sound in real life, but in her imagination they rang loudly between each dreadful pause in their movements, celebrating every hard-earned step in the laborious passage of time.

  Tick, tock.

  Mrs. Pittersworth paced in front of the classroom, reciting almost verbatim from the textbook she held. But try as she might, Bella couldn’t focus on what Mrs. Pittersworth was saying for more than a minute or so. She found her mind wandering again, and soon her eyelids grew heavy.

  Focus, she scolded herself.

  Bella sighed, opening her notebook. On the left page were various algebra problems, and on the right a half-finished sketch of a dragon standing next to a sixteen-year-old girl. The girl was Bella herself; slender, with chocolate-colored skin and long, curly black hair pulled back into a ponytail. Big brown eyes and arched eyebrows. Jeans and a loose sweater…the clothes Bella was wearing now. The dragon was one she’d drawn hundreds of times before, if not thousands. It was no ordinary dragon, the ones with pretty golden scales and elegant wings and such. No, this dragon had no scales whatsoever. Or much in the way of flesh for that matter. It was a skeletal dragon, pinpricks of ghostly light glimmering from deep within in its eye sockets. Bony wings spread outward magnificently from its back, skeletal fingers connected by inky-black skin. The dragon stood between the girl and a menacing figure; a tall man cast entirely in shadow, wielding a long, slender sword that glowed with an eerie light.

  She gazed at the dragon – her dragon – for the moment forgetting the tortuous passage of time.

  “Now, if you turn to page fifty-seven,” Mrs. Pittersworth instructed, her voice practically quivering with anticipation, “…you’ll find your very first quadratic equation!”

  Bella glanced at her textbook, flipping to the appropriate page. Not because she was particularly interested in what it had to say, but because she didn’t want to get caught not paying attention again. The last thing she needed was another day of detention. It was obvious that teachers knew how absolutely awful school was; the worst punishment of all was to give you more of it.

  Tick, tock.

  She turned to gaze out of the tall, narrow windows to her left. Stately trees stood in a sea of grass, their red and orange leaves fluttering in a slight breeze. The year was dying, its long, cheery days – and the freedom they’d brought – but a wistful memory now. Dark, dreary days were ahead, cold and devoid of life, with no end in sight.

  Bella sighed again, returning her attention to her dragon. She picked up her pencil and started filling in a few details. Long bone-colored horns atop its head. Short spikes on each vertebra of its spine. Each finger and toe terminating in a deadly black claw. And, as always, a heart-shaped ruby amulet embedded within its long breastbone.

  Bella hesitated, then drew a jagged crack in the center of the ruby, touching her chest with her other hand. She felt the same amulet there, resting against her breastbone.

  “Bella?”

  She barely heard her teacher, continuing to draw, finishing her dragon’s tail. It was long and thin, curling around its feet.

  “Bella!”

  She jerked her head up, staring at Mrs. Pittersworth from across the room. Mrs. Pittersworth stared right back, her hands on her narrow hips. She did not look pleased.

  “Are you doodling again?” her teacher snapped. Bella grimaced. There was no point in lying; Mrs. Pittersworth would march right up and snatch the notebook away to see for herself.

  “Yes Mrs. Pittersworth,” she mumbled.

  “Show me,” Pittersworth commanded, extending a hand. Bella sighed, grabbing her notebook and getting up from her desk, walking dejectedly to the front of the class. She heard snickering from her classmates.

  “Here,” she muttered, handing the notebook over. Mrs. Pittersworth studied the drawing, her lips pulled into a thin, disapproving line. Then she handed Bella the notebook, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Do you think you’ll be able to make a living doodling dragons, Bella?”

  More snickers from the back of the classroom.

  “No Mrs. Pittersworth,” Bella mumbled, lowering her gaze to her feet.

  “Then I suggest you pay attention during class,” her teacher counseled. “Look at me when I talk to you!”

  Bella lifted her gaze reluctantly.

  “How many times have I warned you Bella?” Mrs. Pittersworth demanded. “And still you don’t listen. So now we’ll be spending some quality time together at detention.”

  Bella nodded mutely, walking back to her desk and slumping back into it.

  “Weirdo,” someone whispered from behind.

  Bella felt her cheeks grow warm, and did her best to ignore the eyes she knew were on her. She glanced at the clock, its hands seeming to move even slower than before.

  Tick, tock.

  She gave a heavy sigh, turning her attention to her algebra book and doing her best to listen to her teacher. Time stretched outward before her, a veritable infinity of drudgery. First school, then a job, forever a slave to the clock. Always waiting for something better. For a tiny sliver of freedom at the end of the day, where she could finally be herself…without anyone yelling or snickering at her for it.

  She’d been so close, a mere twenty minutes away. But now there would be many more ticks and tocks before she was finally free of the clock.

  * * *

  Bella plodded up the spiral staircase toward the third floor of her apartment building, her overstuffed backpack threatening to pull her backward and send her tumbling down the stairs. A heavy sigh escaped her, the weight on her shoulders both literal and figurative. For though she had finally managed to escape that horrid prison they called high school,
she was not truly free from its clutches. A monstrous amount of homework was waiting for her, cackling from its lair within the dark recesses of her backpack.

  It offered a grim choice: a quick death by yanking her down the stairs with its awful weight, or the slow, painful disintegration of her soul.

  She chose the latter, trudging along until she’d reached the third-floor landing. A dull brown door greeted her, the paint scuffed and peeling. Stepping up to it, she knocked precisely thirteen times, in the rhythm she’d long since memorized.

  There was no answer.

  She counted to herself, reaching thirty-three, then knocked again, seven times.

  “Yes?” a deep, muffled voice inquired from beyond the door.

  She recited the following passage:

  “A dragon circle,

  White and good,

  Will one day rise

  For Havenwood.”

  There was a click from beyond the door, followed by a thunk, then another series of clicks. The door swung open, revealing a short, narrow hallway beyond…guarded by an old man. He would’ve been tall if the weight of time hadn’t bent his spine. Time had been similarly cruel to his short curly hair and haphazard beard, draining them of their color until they were stark white. He wore a ratty brown sweater and gray sweatpants that’d grown far too big for him…the same ones he’d worn yesterday, she noted with dismay. His dark brown skin was lined with wrinkles, only his eyes carrying the spark of life. They peered at her from behind golden spectacles, then past her to the stairwell beyond.

  “You’re late,” he accused in a deep, rich baritone, the kind of voice that could fill a room and send chills down your spine. “Are you…?”

  “I’m alone Grandpa,” she confirmed wearily, pushing past him and into the hallway beyond. She kicked off her shoes, setting them neatly against the wall, then slid her backpack off, letting it fall to the floor with a thump. Grandpa shut the door quickly, re-engaging the ridiculous number of locks he’d installed on it.