Free Inherited Magic by Andrew Gordinier Page A

wandered through his stuff and searched with assorted gear he didn't recognize. He guessed they were looking for explosives or traces of chemicals. What they would never find was what John saw in the building’s pattern and the patterns around it. Even from the L stop, he could see that something bad had happened. The normally orderly pattern of the building’s wall had not only been blasted out but looked like it had been unraveled. Parts of the pattern extended out into open space and just halted or were tangled with patterns and threads around the building. One poor pigeon that must have been caught in the blast was fused to the outside of the building and not quite dead yet. He hoped the people searching his apartment wouldn't find it because it just screamed urban legend to him.
    The disruption in the patterns was so severe that he was able to track them out the hole that was his apartment wall, down to the rooftop of the neighboring building, then rooftop to rooftop, as the trail headed further north towards the Loyola campus. It was worse than the sloppy magic he had done on his first attempts; someone was destroying patterns. Was that possible? The destruction left a visible trail, as the world quickly tried to fill the void left by them. The chaos was astounding to John, who had come to respect and enjoy the idea and visuals of an ordered universe.
    As he tried to make sense of it, the thunderous roar of another explosion rolled across the landscape and smoke leaped into the sky. It was somewhere further north, and as John was trying to see where, he spotted a dark figure sailing through the air, leaving a trail of ripped patterns behind it.
    It was a human figure, but its patterns were all wrong. There were too many threads bisecting places that were normally gentle curves, and there were flashes of a fiery pattern that wandered throughout, leaving behind damaged and altered shapes. The most troubling part, though, was that the light inside was flickering and smooth. The normally angular light that seemed to lock and hold everything together in living objects was disfigured and unraveling. As the figure got closer, John could see the man was in pain. He came down for a landing in an alley and fell, stumbled, and launched himself into the air again. He dropped something in the alley though. Its pattern was damaged, but John was afraid he knew what it was.
    He ran down the stairs and across the street, through traffic, ignoring the blare of horns and people yelling. He had to hurry; he didn't know who else saw the man leaping through the air or who might have seen him in the alley. It was a mixed blessing that almost everyone was hidden away from this very maniac. There was no one to report a flying killer, and there was no one to point the direction for the police. Time was of the essence in getting what he dropped. No matter how few people were out, things still vanished in alleys. His heart raced and his feet thundered on the pavement as he turned the corner into the alley. It had seemed so much closer from his vantage point on the L platform.
    There, in the street, lay his journal, burnt around the edges and still damp from the flood waters and, in some places, blood. John opened it briefly and flipped through the pages. The patterns were ruined by water; the ink had run, causing them to disfigure and distort. Only the briefest of glances caused John’s head to spin and his eyes to hurt. This was quickly followed by a sense of shame and guilt. This was his fault, and people were dead. He shoved the wrinkled notebook into his coat and ran as fast he could back to the L stop and perhaps the last remaining payphone in Chicago.
     

Chapter 22
     
    Owen wanted to kill the kid.
    He had never been as angry in his life as he was the moment that John said it was his “journal” that had started all the commotion. He paced the full length of his apartment several times, cursing himself for taking the kid on as a