maeko burke / ozymandias pryce

[Music in headphones is turned up to maximum volume]

"Well now you're a persistent sort, aren't ya? Alrighty, well..."

"Yeah, sure...somethin' like that."

After her home was invaded by Mathis’ goons, Maeko climbed up to the roof of a nearby building and waited until sunrise, to see if the slumlord would actually make good on the threat his lackeys had promised. 

He did. Maeko watched as Borgin and Burkes allowed Mathis through its front doors, and then she felt the old building’s allegiance change—a grinding ache, deep in her bone marrow, that physically immobilized her for just under a quarter hour. She shivered with sweat and clutched at her ribs on that grimy rooftop until at last the wards severed completely, releasing her.

She scrambled down to the alley, weaving in and out of dawn’s shadows until she reached Justin’s flat near the Diagon Alley Menagerie. Knowing Justin was in Brazil visiting family for the holidays, Maeko let herself in.

A post owl tapped on the window, nearly spooking Mae out of her skin. She hastily let the creature in, and was surprised to find it held a note with her name on it.

The piece of parchment, which contained one single, cryptic line, was left unsigned. 

But it didn’t need to be. Maeko recognized the handwriting.

“How in seven fucking hells did you even find me?” Maeko spat accusingly (and rather unfairly) at the owl. It tilted its head a full 45 degrees, as if to say, is this witch really yelling at ME right now? 

Scowling, Maeko grabbed a blank piece of parchment from Justin’s cluttered desk and scrawled:

Did you know all that was going to happen, you prick? Have you just been sitting around in Scotland for three fucking years, waiting until you could say ‘ I told you so ’ ??

Her hand shook, and she dropped the quill. 

After a moment, Maeko added:

Why didn’t you warn me, Tucker? Are you really that pissed at me for leaving? Why wouldn’t you tell me what would happen if I came back to this awful fucking place?

She held up the quivering piece of parchment, eyes darting over what she’d written. Then, with a single thought toward the conduit that now adorned her finger, the letter exploded in an unnatural burst of black smoke and flame.

"Smashin' up the place proper, with Mae...whadda ya reckon she's gettin' up to, just now?"

Part Two: "I am the blood of the dragon. If they are monsters, so am I."

13B Knockturn Alley; December

Maeko was lying on Oz’s favorite god-awful salmon-colored fainting couch in an old tee shirt, her legs bare. Her dark cascades of unwashed waves clashed horribly with the upholstery as it spilled off the edge closest to her head, and she picked idly at a place where the seam had split and the stuffing was coming loose. 

It was dark and somber inside Borgin and Burkes. It had been dark, Maeko thought, since Oz had been gone. Or maybe since that fucking thing that still roamed loose on the streets had attacked him. Or maybe longer, still—maybe the dark had been creeping in for an eternity, and they’d only managed to hold it off so long with a few pathetically short-lived spots of light.

The house was empty, too, save for its unfortunate heir and owner. And Piper—but she’d kept to her room so much that Maeko would never have known she was there, if it wasn’t for the occasional creak of a floorboard above her head. A few times, the sound of muffled sobs coming from behind Piper’s closed door. Maeko thought about checking in on her, seeing if she was alright, but then again—it wasn't her business. If Piper wanted Maeko’s attention, she’d ask for it.

Something had happened, with Pax and Loxley Blair—that was all Maeko knew. Paxton had warned Maeko about the aura leak at the house, and when Piper had gone to fix it, she’d come back a shell-shocked wreck. Pax wasn’t answering Maeko’s calls or texts, so she figured he just needed time. And Loxley—well. It wasn’t Maeko’s place to pry, and that wasn’t her style.

Still, it felt…strange. Maeko had always been the sort of person who took comfort in quiet and solitude, but this was different. For over a month now, the only thing Maeko Burke felt in this house was that something was missing.

Someone was missing.

Maeko might have continued wallowing like that until sunrise, if it wasn’t for the sudden low, groaning creeeeeeeak of the front door’s hinges as it opened. Maeko stiffened, her fingers tightening around her wand as she held perfectly still.

“Would ya lookit that—s’just like Mathis said, innit?” came a gruff male voice that Maeko did not recognize. “Walked right through the front door with no fuss…”

“Kid musta really done it, then…” came a second voice, this one lower and more gravelly. “…took down the wards. Never thought I’d see the day.”

Silently, Maeko shifted her body off the chaise until she was crouched on the ground, concealed by shadows. She tried not to be distracted by the panicked pulsing of her heartbeat in her ears; how had Mathis, that fucking oaf, broken through the property’s ancient blood wards? 

There wasn’t time to be scared; there wasn't time to think. The two thugs were making their way toward the staircase, and Maeko wasn’t about to let them get to Piper.

“Boss said she’d be alone, so let’s find the brat and get outta here,” one was saying as Maeko rose to her feet and shot off a nonverbal hex with the precision of a sniper. Her target yelped in surprise and pain, while the other whirled toward where Maeko stood in the dark and snarled, “You little fucking bitch—”

A beam of magic whizzed through the air in Maeko’s direction and she deflected it, unable to conceal the sounds of her movement as three more spells were fired her way in rapid succession. She dodged one, counter-spelled another, and then dove behind an armchair to avoid the last, and watched as the entire piece of furniture sizzled and melted before her eyes, like it’d been doused in acid. She could see the shadowy silhouettes of the intruders approaching slowly, like they were trying to corner a feral dog, and as quietly as she could, Maeko crawled on her hands and knees to the nearest corner of the room, her wand between her teeth.

“Let’s all just calm down a bit now, yeah? There ain’t no need for things to get nasty—you just come along with us to Mathis, and we won’t have no need to hurt ya…” The man who wasn’t talking cast an illumination charm and held his wand out in front of him, moving it to and fro as he attempted to illuminate various areas in the room. Maeko dropped flat onto her stomach and held still, putting a hand over her nose and mouth to quiet the sound of her breath, the fingers that were curled around her wand handle trembling. 

“Here, kitty, kitty—we’ll play nice if you will…” the other thug cooed, clicking his tongue at her in a way that made Maeko’s skin crawl, made her blood heat up in her veins. She ground her molars together inside her mouth, and from the ground, she fired.

The first spell sliced deep into the achilles heel of the man holding the lit wand; he roared and fell to the ground, blood spraying all over the wood floors and the furniture and the trousers of his companion. The orb of illumination bobbed wildly as he flailed and toppled, before ending up by chance pointed directly at where Maeko was hiding, lighting up the angles of her furious face. 

“She’s right there—fuckin’ grab her!” The injured man shrieked, and Maeko scrambled to her feet as the second man made a mad dash toward her. He reared back his wand, but Maeko was faster, hitting him directly in one of the eyes; the man cursed as his eye began to blister and ooze with greenish pus.

But it didn’t slow the momentum of his approach, and as Maeko prepared a defensive spell, he caught her off guard by instead punching her hard in the stomach. She cried out, seeing white as the air was knocked from her and she doubled over in pain. 

And then he had a rough hand around her throat and he slammed her back into a wall, shifting some things that were mounted and dislodging some dust with the force of it. Maeko swung her arm up on instinct, making to drive the pointed end of her wand into the side of her assailant’s head—but he saw the move coming, and grabbed Maeko's wrist in his other fist, squeezing until the bones nearly cracked, and Maeko emitted a wail of pain and rage as her wand clattered to the ground.

“Mathis was right—you are a feisty little cunt, aren’t ya?” snarled the man who had her pinned, looming closer still. This close up, Maeko could smell the pus leaking from the near-swollen-shut crease of his red-and-purple eye, the stink of his rancid breath as he exhaled a hair-raising laugh into her face. She squirmed back as much as she could, grunting and straining as she reached up to claw at the hand that was held like a vice around her throat, feeling his torn skin wedge beneath her nails. But her efforts only made the man smile a gruesome, sadistic grimace that turned Maeko’s stomach to lead, most of his teeth cracked or blackened; he hoisted her further up the wall until her feet were scrambling, her toes barely grazing the ground.

It was getting harder to draw in full breaths. Her eyes scanned the ground frantically for her wand, only to find it being vindictively stomped beneath the non-injured booted foot of the thug she’d dropped earlier, a trail of blood along the floorboards from where he’d dragged himself over. Maeko felt it in her body, the second her wand broke into pieces; not as strongly as the dawn at Hogwarts in her fifth year, when Maeko had pointed her heirloom wand right at Tucker’s face a second before she’d snapped it in half, with her own two hands. 

This pain was duller, but it still hurt. She whimpered with the breath she had, her teeth grinding together as she fought and strained again, to no avail. The man who had her pinned was leering at her, Maeko realized belatedly; his eyes traveled from the savage explosion of curls that were frizzed out around her head, to her open panting mouth, to the worn tee shirt that was riding dangerously up her midriff the more she struggled, nearly exposing her ribs now. She became suddenly, acutely aware that she was just wearing a pair of boy’s knickers, her scuffed and scratched legs perilously bare. Maeko stilled, her blood chilling, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she drew in strained, panicked breaths. 

His hand stayed wrapped around her throat, but the rest of his body shifted intentionally from simply restraining Maeko to holding her in place; her hips and thighs were pushed back until they were flush against the wall, and a meaty forearm pressed down like a fleshy bar across the center of her chest, a bony elbow digging into her diaphragm. The hand that was holding her wrist pinned it up above her head. He whistled through his sparse teeth, appraising Maeko like he would a slab of meat on display in a butcher shop window. “Mathis said he wanted to finish the job, but…he never said we couldn’t have us a little fun with ‘er beforehand, did he, d’ya reckon?”

His companion spat on the ground. “Don’t recall him sayin’ nothin’ about that. Reckon she has it comin’—reckon it’s the least we’re owed, after what she’s put us through…”

“Aye, I concur…” drawled the first again, fixing his gaze back on the prize he intended to claim.

Maeko’s glare was like blue fire smoldering with hatred and contempt as she stared her would-be assaulter dead in his one good eye, refusing to be cowed or show even a trace of fear. If they expected her to cry, to beg, to scream, well…

Then they really had no fucking idea who they were dealing with.

“Fuck you,” Maeko spat out in the most defiant wheeze she could muster, and both men laughed; the one who had his hands on her squeezed his fingers tighter around her neck, until her dangling heels were scraping and scrambling against the wall for purchase. 

The thugs shifted toward her, readying to pounce, when suddenly there was a telltale groaning of the eternally loose stair that was toward the top of the staircase, and all three sets of eyes shot up to find Piper Oliver creeping down the stairs, her pale blue hair and gauzy nightgown shining in the moonlight.

The surprise interruption drew the focus of the man who was pinning Maeko enough that he moved back, just a fraction—and that was all Maeko needed. She braced her upper body and thrust her knee and thigh up hard in between his legs, to which he groaned in sudden, blinding discomfort and released her involuntarily. Maeko crumbled to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut and then lunged past the man with the injured foot who was reaching out to grab her. He caught her by the hair and threw her back and across the ground, her bare skin squeaking against the floorboards as Maeko slid through the trail of blood that wasn’t hers, while Piper screamed. 

“Piper—RUN!” Maeko yelled. But then the strangest thing happened. An earth-shattering tidal wave of pure terror washed over and through her, overtaking all of her senses, drowning out every other feeling and thought. It felt foreign and invasive, but it was so powerful and overwhelming that Maeko couldn’t process anything else.

Except that the two men were cowering and whimpering pathetically, like they felt it, too. 

It lasted for maybe thirty seconds, a minute at most. But when it was finished, the intruders exchanged one frantic, wide-eyed look before scrambling toward the front door, nearly trampling each other in their haste. The one who’d had Maeko pinned ran into the night without looking back, while the injured man only paused his hobbling, limping retreat long enough to point a finger at Maeko and hiss, “You’ve got hours, Burke. Mathis will come at dawn to claim 13B, and if he finds you here, he’ll kill ya.”

***

When it was clear the intruders would not be coming back, Piper rushed down to crouch at Maeko’s side, careful not to exacerbate her injuries as she helped her to sit up. 

And it was then that Maeko saw it clearly—saw her. It wasn’t the moonlight that was making Piper glow—it was her. Her whole body, from her fingertips to her bare feet, the length of every strand of her blue hair, were lit up with ethereal silvery light from within.

Maeko couldn’t help but gawk. No wonder Piper had been holed up in her room. “What did—how are you doing that? How did you do that?”

“I…I don’t know…” Piper said in a hushed, frightened tone, her wide eyes filling up with tears. “…those men, I could feel their—what they were going to do to you and I just—I-I’m not sure, I just know that I was scared and that feeling just sort of—sort of shot out of me, I guess, I…”

Piper sobbed abruptly, but Maeko drew up her hands between her own and said earnestly, “Well, whatever you did—thank you…” Piper nodded, sniffling, but did not look very convinced. And unfortunately, they didn’t have time for comfort or reassurances. “…I’m sorry, Peach, but we need to move. They obviously found a way through the wards, and I reckon it’s not safe for us here, anymore…” 

A wounded expression flittered across the Veela’s face at the use of Oz’s pet name for her, but it seemed to get through. She helped Maeko to her feet, and hastily they made a plan; one hour. Piper, who still had a working wand, would gather up what she could of her own belongings, and any that remained of Loxley’s, and Dylan’s, and Oz’s. She’d pack them into the extendable trunk, and transport it to the Sunbeam studio through the vanishing cabinet, which she would afterwards irreparably destroy. 

And Maeko would gather the last remaining fragments of the illustrious Burkes, from the ancestral home whose allegiance had turned. 

She dressed in dark jeans, a leather jacket, and tall black combat boots. She pulled on a black hooded cloak from the back of her closet that was once Isla’s; it was long and draped like robes, but fitted, with dark metal buttons running down the length of one side. She pulled the hood up, and when Maeko caught a passing glimpse of herself in the mirror, she stopped short. For her entire life, Maeko had fought against the presumption that you could know a person’s nature just by the look of them.

But right now? Maeko got it—what Max and the others must have seen, when they looked at Maeko Burke. She’d never looked more like a Death Eater. 

There were very few things inside the ruins of Borgin and Burkes that had escaped Max and the DMLE’s confiscation. But what little there was left, Maeko gathered into a small rucksack. 

And she saved the most dreadful for last.

Maeko crawled beneath the bed and pried up one unmarked floorboard with her bloodstained fingers. She withdrew a small box, that had upon it layers and layers of intricate charming that kept it from being detectable via magic. It would only open, Maeko knew, for a Burke. She opened the box.

Resting inside on a plush velvet pillow was a giant ruby ring, inlaid in a rectangular setting of delicately webbed steel-grey metal. Maeko felt the power pulsing from the conduit immediately—whispering seductively, caressing Maeko’s sensory attention like a lover.

Some power was better left buried, Maeko knew. And this dark secret was one that Maeko Burke had fully intended to take to her own grave.

But—desperate times, as they say. She plucked the ring from its pillow and could swear she felt it purr with sinful pleasure. She took a breath, and slid it onto her finger. 

Maeko felt its effect immediately, the cool energy crawling through her bloodstream like shadows in the night. She hummed, stretching her muscles as the power explored her body and settled. It felt…discomfortingly natural. And when it passed through her chest, something else unfurled from within Maeko to meet it, blooming outward in ecstasy like a night-blooming flower. There was something ancient and primordial about it, like a force that had existed long before Maeko was born, simply lying in wait. And yet—it was entirely her, too, somehow.

A weapon awaiting its true wielder, a gilded sword lodged in ancient stone that would not budge until the rightful King tried to pull it free.

Part One: The King of the Rats

Knockturn Alley; October

For years now, Mathis had been dreaming of ways to murder Maeko Burke.

“Wouldn’t do, for recruitin’ to your cause,” Nezza had warned him. Repeatedly. It’d send a statement to all the underlings and urchins who haunted Knockturn Alley, to be sure. The rats who ran crime in this town would all know who their leader was. 

But offing a Sacred Twenty-Eight legacy brat would lose Mathis the respect and—more importantly—the business of the wizards with real means, those in power and with pedigree that meant they had deep pockets and a need for others to do their dirty work. Those at the top would always lean on the seedy underbelly that held up the precious world upon which they stood—but they’d never risk scuffing their shoes, sullying their good names, with just any unknown criminal to rise up in the ranks. The people who mattered would only ever trust a name they knew, to get their hands dirty. The King stayed the King.

And Mathis had no intention of being King of the Rats.

Still, as Maeko Burke spent year after year holed up in the known seat of criminal power for the city, turning up her precious little nose at the vermin all around her who were clawing and scraping for a fraction of what she’d been handed on a silver fuckin platter, willfully ignoring the heaps of privilege that could have seen her rise to the position her father had laid out for her with a snap of her fingers and refusing to cede the seat to someone worthy, someone who actually fucking wanted it—Mathis watched, and resented, and stewed. 

Every time she stumbled home from the pub with her little friends, late at night, Mathis thought about how easy it would be to walk right up and slit her pretty white throat, to stain the grimy cobblestones with liters and liters of Maeko Burke’s pretty pure blood. He thought about squeezing her neck with his bare hands until it snapped, until he’d wiped that sanctimonious smirk off her face, until her bonny blue eyes bulged out of her daft empty skull. He thought about stringing her up by her fine raven hair, like a noose, and letting her rot away as she dangled at the entrance to the alley—a warning to any other pious pureblooded brats who thought they were better than him.

But Mathis knew Nezza was right; he'd gain nothing but satisfaction from slaughtering Maeko Burke in the street, no matter how simple it would be, how much he longed to do it. 

Still, Mathis hadn’t come to Knockturn Alley just to give up and turn tail, nor to blindly accept the status quo and be content as a low-ranking slumlord, quietly taking his scraps. No, Mathis hadn’t done all he’d done to get here, to force the loyalty of those that followed him, to strong-arm his way into lucrative alliances, to slowly edge out Aldon, just to give up now, when he was so close to that slow drip of power that he could nearly taste it—thick and black like tar. 

Mathis was willing to play the long game, to wait for that elusive something that would give him the edge he needed. 

And then, that something finally came. It was a boy.

***

What wizard-folk didn’t understand about the have-nots who’d been born outside their cushy magical world, was that those without would do just about anything to get that which they didn’t have. Everything had its price—even magic; that was something that wix knew well enough, when they’d empty their pockets for the rats in Knockturn Alley to acquire the fix they desired, or shake hands with agreeable co-conspirators making off-the-books deals in the dark. For wix, there was always a quick fix to be found, if you were able to pay the right price.

But Mathis had truly come from nothing. The hedge witches in Coventry where Mathis had learned all he knew didn’t have an excess of anything—not magic, and certainly not money. When it was time to pay up, the coven dealt in flesh. Some used their bodies as a more carnal sort of collateral. But Mathis, who had never been pretty or desirable in that way, had given up his ear the good old fashioned way—the way that had later earned his old coven the moniker The Cannibals. 

Eventually, he’d outgrown the meager criminal earnings he could exploit from hedge witches; they were all thieves and addicts from the jump, the types of have-nots who would never have anything, and thus would never have the means to pay a debt that was worth collecting. So Mathis set his sights on the haves—the big leagues, the high-and-mighty wizards who sought out their illegal dealings in London's infamous Knockturn Alley. Mathis knew he would have to shed his old skin as a hedge witch like a snake; if he wanted to turn a real profit in the magical underworld, he would need to deal only with magical folks who had a good wizard’s family name, who brought with them a wizard’s full coin purse.

But he still had contacts in Coventry. The Cannibals still traded in flesh and in skin—sometimes they’d send body parts, for distribution and sale in a more lucrative market. Sometimes a wizard politician would get word to Mathis—who’d built his reputation in the criminal underworld on being able to procure whatever you want, as strong as you want—that he desired some pretty young thing off the books to boost his morale, and the Cannibals would be efficient in trafficking one of their chattel. Sometimes, if an enterprising discipline emerged amongst their ranks, the hedges from Coventry would send Mathis a hedge witch to work under him, in exchange for regular cuts off of whatever they earned.

It was the latter that happened, when a scrappy little waif of a boy showed up at Mathis’ hideout in Knockturn Alley. He’d been sent from Coventry, he said. And he had a discipline in unweaving wards. 

***

After having the kid prove himself in a few small-time B&E jobs, Mathis set him to the much more important and complex task of meticulously unweaving the ancient blood wards that had, for centuries, protected the reigning seat of power for the magical underworld—13B Knockturn Alley—from being seized through mutiny. 

It would never have been possible, no matter how powerful the discipline, were it not for one peculiar day in Knockturn Alley, in September, when all her residents had noted an unknown disturbance in magic coming from 13B, the former Borgin and Burkes. The aura around the ancient place had been noticeably glitchy, more and more so ever since that day.

And it was only that minuscule weakness, in a fortress that had stood for hundreds of years, that allowed the kid to begin his painstaking task, like chipping away at a solid stone wall with a dull chisel. Pebble by pebble, bit by bit, thread by thread—for months, the boy would be at it. 

And all Mathis had to do was sit patiently and wait, as he had done for years. Until the wards on 13B Knockturn Alley finally fell, and Mathis could walk right through the front door, and drag Maeko Burke by her hair kicking and screaming from her own wee bed.

"All I know is everything tastes pretty fuckin' fab when you burn as much spliff as I do."

"Now, what is that big fancy word your lot like to use in the Department for tosh like this...? Entrapment? Come on—you can do better than that."

"Awh! Are ya sayin' I'm as pretty as my sweet Peach? That's sweet."