"Magic In the Blood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Monk Devon)Chapter SeventeenAnger does wonders for all sorts of things. My pain-twice-wounded thigh, headache, fever, and every damn inch of my ghost-burned skin-didn’t hurt so much. Walking-even if it meant all the way across Portland-seemed like a completely sane and reasonable thing to do. And whoever was important enough that Pike had tried to tell me about them with his dying words was going to get a visit from me, whether they were girls, a doctor, or something else. And Pike said whoever that was had my blood. No one stopped me as I made my way north and west, heading toward the heart of town. Maybe it was because it was icy and there weren’t many people out. Or maybe I didn’t see anyone because I was covered in blood and carrying a knife. Or it could be because the trail of magic in my blood led me down little-used alleys and footpaths hidden from traffic. Whatever it was, I stopped at an old warehouse without anyone getting in my way. The old brick building’s windows were boarded and broken. Red, black, and white graffiti twice as tall as me turned the crumbling brick and sagging doors into one flat canvas. There. I knew my blood was there, inside that building. I didn’t pull on magic, didn’t want to draw the Veiled forward again, didn’t want to alert whoever was in there with my blood that I was near. A wave of dizziness washed over me. No, not now. I didn’t have time to fall apart. I put one hand on the brick wall next to the only door on ground level and breathed until the world stopped rocking beneath my feet. When the dizzy spell passed, I tasted wintergreen on the back of my throat and I smelled leather. My dad. The last thing I needed right now was for him to show up and screw with me. I looked around the filthy alley, the dim light of morning glinting against the dark, ragged-toothed windows above me. No ghost. No father. Good. I lifted the latch on the door with my left hand, expecting it to be locked, rusted, welded shut. The latch released. I nudged the door inward on silent hinges. The warehouse might look abandoned, but someone had been using it enough to bother with oiling the door. The door swung open just enough that I could see into the shadows and wide-open space beyond. Light filtered through grimy windows high on the wall to my left, illuminating the decaying brick and plaster wall in the back. Arcs of graffiti stained the wall, and in one slant of light someone had painted a face twisted in a scream, teeth crooked and white around a gaping black mouth. The floor shone with a layer of water. The stink of pigeon, rat, blood, and rot filled my nose. I paused but heard nothing but the traffic in the distance and my own uneven breathing. I opened the door a little wider, put a little too much weight on my left thigh, and went dizzy with pain again. Damn. In the light from the last window, I could see someone slumped in a chair, so near the screaming face that for a moment I wondered if the chair and person were part of the art on the wall. But then the person twitched, the head swinging back and forth at a strange angle. I toed the door open a little farther, and my eyes, more adjusted to the light now, could make out the person: a man. No, a boy, head hanging forward, body and arms tied to the plain wooden chair with wide leather straps. I could smell his sweat, his pain, and his blood. Anthony. The Hound kid Pike said had cast those spells to kidnap the girls with Pike’s blood. Sure, I promised Pike I’d look after the Hounds-all of them-and I meant it. But I felt a small dark satisfaction seeing Anthony tied up. It was all I could do not to storm across the room and shake him until he told me why he had betrayed Pike. Why he had let him die. But chances were if there was someone tied up in a chair, the person who did the tying was nearby. And since I hadn’t been grabbed or shot at yet, I figured that person was not currently in the room. Now was my chance to get Anthony out of there. First, rescue the kid. I could kick his ass after I carted him down to the police. I walked into the room, let the door swing silently shut behind me. The electric tingle of heavy Wards clicking into place as the door shut made me shiver. And without the extra light from the door, I suddenly felt like there were too many shadows in the room. Unnatural shadows. I calmed my mind, set a Disbursement-I was going to be in the hospital if I kept this up-and silently wove the glyph for Reveal. The entire warehouse changed. Dark burnt-ash glyphs on the walls flared to life. The walls dripped with pastel light carved in a mosaic of Life and Death glyphs just like the ones I had seen on the wall outside Get Mugged. The light from the glyphs was bright enough that I could make out the rest of the room. To my right, a row of six cots neatly lined up along one wall. There were people on those cots, young women. The girls Pike was talking about. Maybe even the kidnapped girls Stotts was looking for. Black lines of magic coiled around their still forms from head to toe like dark silken cocoons. More lines of magic extended from their chests, snaking and pulsing through the air to attach to two surgical tables in the center of the room. One of those tables was empty, and the other had a prone figure across it. Next to four of the cots stood a ghostly copy of each girl. Not quite as pale as the Veiled, the transparent girls swayed in time to the pulsing lines of magic extending from their physical bodies, as if rocked by a gentle current. Just like the Veiled, they saw me and opened their mouths in hunger. All of them stepped toward me, arms extended. And then the lines of magic holding them to their bodies thickened, tightened, and thrummed with a bass-drum thump, jerking them back a half step, though their hands still wove in the air as if they could almost reach me. Six cots, six girls, but only four ghosts. Did that mean the other girls were more dead or more alive? Holy shit. I looked back at Anthony. No spirit stood next to him. Strangely, though I’d been holding Reveal for several seconds, there were also no Veiled, no pastel fog. I could only assume it had to be because of the pastel wards painted on the walls. I hope they held. I walked over to Anthony first. I tried to be quiet, which was near impossible in my boots over the uneven wooden plank floor and with my left leg hurting with every step. Anthony did not move. I gently lifted his head. If I didn’t know Anthony’s scent, I might not recognize him. The kid was a mess. Blood poured out his ears. He was bruised and swollen like he’d gone through a meat grinder. And I knew it wasn’t from physical violence. Thick ropes of magic wrapped around his neck and sent tendrils of ebony chains down to sink into his belly and chest, where they then reached upward to press over his face like an iron mask and stab deeply into his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. An Offload glyph. Someone was using him to bear a hell of a price for using magic. Dark magic. I traced the fingers of my left hand over the magic chains, and Anthony twitched with every link my fingertip brushed. I didn’t know how to break a spell this powerful without killing him. Only a doctor who was skilled in Siphon spells and knew how to slowly drain the magic off of him could break something this strong. Shit. Who would do this to a kid? I could probably answer that if I kept tracing, Hounding the spell around him, but every time I touched the spell, Anthony jerked in pain. I didn’t know how long he’d been tied up like this. Didn’t know how much more pain he could endure. Just because I couldn’t break the spell on him didn’t mean I couldn’t untie him from the chair. I’d carry him out of the warehouse, find a phone, and call the police. “Allie.” The whisper was close, a cold exhale against my cheek. Holy shit. I didn’t see my father. Didn’t see his ghost. But I realized that all the lines of magic in the room-coming from the girls, coming from the glyphs on the walls-were connected to whoever was lying on that surgical table. I took a step closer to the table. The figure was familiar. Two more steps, and I recognized that profile. And I should. It was my father. This was too much. Too much too fast. I pressed the palm of my left hand over my forehead, trying to steady my breathing, trying not to let the part of me that was screaming and screaming take over. Images of Pike’s bloody body, his mutilated face, flashed behind my eyes. Trager’s bloody smile mixed with that, his cold gaze as he shot me, stabbed me, died on me, a heavy stinking heap of flesh that I stabbed until his blood gushed down my legs. Stabbed until he was dead. What did I think I was doing? I wasn’t a cop. I wasn’t a soldier. I wasn’t a killer. I was a Hound. Good at tracking spells. The part of me that was screaming took up a new chant. What if my father was still alive-right there, on that table, in this hell house? What if all those lines of magic leading to his body were keeping him alive? A ringing started in my ears and I felt the room rock a little more. Hello, shock. Wondered when you’d get here. All before whoever was throwing this little soiree came back to check on the guests. I gripped Zayvion’s dagger tighter and limped over to the tables in the middle of the room. The ghost girls to my left moaned and shifted, stretching to the lengths of their magical chains, hands still clawing the air for me. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if those chains broke. I stopped next to the table. My dad-my dad’s body-was strapped down to the table, leather bindings across the ankles, hips, and both wrists. Why? My mind raced with images from horror movies. Things people did to torture, to destroy. But none of it matched this. It was as if someone expected his body might get up, leave, go for a walk, escape. Which was ridiculous. Because even I could tell he was very, very dead. Black lines of magic from the girls draped down to play like wind-stirred mist across a large square lead and glass engraved plate on my dad’s chest. From this angle, I could make out glyphs of Life surrounded by glyphs of Death carved on the plate just like the wall outside Get Mugged-just like the walls in here. The acrid stink of chemicals-formaldehyde and something else-the rancid scent of something biological gone bad, like spoiled fat left in the heat, hit me. And the misty black spell rising like steam off of the plate stank of cloying licorice, so strong it made the back of my throat tighten. Magic. Not blood magic. Not any kind of magic I had ever smelled before. Something dark. Something bad. “Allison.” The whisper came from the other side of the table. I looked up. My dead dad stood on the other side of the table, his corpse spread out between us. Ghost Dad was transparent enough that even the dull light from the window poured through him. He cast no shadow next to mine on the floor. “The gates between the living world and that of the dead are opening.” His voice was the most alive thing about him, though his pale, pale green eyes still shone with a kind of light-anger, determination. He sounded like himself but as if he spoke from across the room even though he was close enough I could touch him. “That’s not my problem.” I wanted it to come out strong, but only a whisper escaped my lips. “Yes,” he said. “It is. There are things you don’t know, dark things, dark magics that dwell on the other side. If they are allowed into this world, you, the people you care for, will die.” I thought about Pike, already dead. Then I thought about Violet, who was pregnant with my father’s child, my brother or sister. I thought about Davy, and then my mind turned to Zayvion. Shit. “I’m going to call the police,” I said a little louder than before. “MERC can handle this. Fix this.” “Allison, listen to me. This is far more than the police or any of the uninitiated can handle. You must do as I say. Let me touch you. Let me use the magic you hold in your body, your blood to seal the gates. It is what you were born for, what you and I were meant to do. With your magic, I can break these spells. Close the gates that are just beginning to open. You and I together can keep those we love safe. Alive.” Okay, I liked it better when he couldn’t talk. Maybe being so close to his dead body made him strong enough his words carried a little of the old Influence he used to use on me to make me do what he wanted. Frankly, everything he was saying just made me want to run like hell. “You want to use me?” I said. And yes, that came out indignant. I get prickly under extreme duress. We had a long history, my father and I. And most of it was him trying to use me for his own benefit. “For all I know you set this up. Maybe you’re the one who wants to open the gates. Maybe you’re the one who is hurting those girls and hurting Anthony.” “If that were true, I would not rely on chance to bring you here. I certainly would not rely on your cooperation for my plan to work. I am not that irresponsible.” He had me there. My father was a thorough bastard when it came to planning and executing his desires. It didn’t seem likely he would implement anything, much less something that may involve a lot of magic, a lot of death, and me going along with it all, in such a haphazard way. Still, he was dead. Maybe dying had dulled his edge. “Fine,” I said. “Prove to me I can trust you. Free Anthony from the Offload.” “Who?” “The boy being used as a Proxy on the other side of this room.” He scowled into the distance as if trying to focus through a fog. “He is nothing.” “He’s someone I care about. Someone I have promised to look after.” “Allie.” He was getting angry. I knew that tone. “You underestimate the severity of the problem. One boy’s life is nothing to give.” “You’re wrong,” I said. “One boy’s life is too much to give. I am going to get the hell out of here, find a phone, and call the police.” I took maybe five painful strides away from my father’s dead body. “Oh, let’s not ruin a good thing,” a man’s voice echoed from behind me. I turned and spotted a movement by the darkest area across the room, which, now that I looked closely, was a doorway. That movement stepped forward into the faint light. Balding, thin, Dr. Frank Gordon ambled across the wooden floor, his dress shoes making solid clucks that echoed against the rotted rafters. As he walked, he rolled the sleeves of his dress shirt up to his elbows. He didn’t look up at me, didn’t look at my father. His glasses caught the liquid play of light and shadow from the windows, reflecting mercury and ebony. In his hand, he held a vial. A vial of blood. My blood. “Do you understand now, Allison?” Dad asked. “This man is a very powerful magic user. He has done Fuck. How did I get in the middle of a dead-undead magic showdown? “To bring the police here?” Frank continued like he had not heard my father, and I realized he Frank pursed his lips and shook his head. “This is too sacred an event to expose to the uninitiated.” There was that term again. “His name is Frank Gordon,” my father said. “He is part of the Authority. An ancient order of men and women who are the caretakers of magic. Life magic in life. Death magic in death.” “I know who the Authority is,” I said to my dad. But it was Frank who answered. “Do you? And here I had thought your father kept you ignorant of such things. Protecting you.” He shook his head. “Such an idealist. You belong to us, Allison. To our world. Both worlds. You always have. Even he knew it.” He squinted to look up at me through his glasses. “Even he knew how useful you would someday be.” My father swore. Called Frank a dozen names in a dozen languages. I had forgotten how extensive his vocabulary was. “My father didn’t know me as well as you might think,” I said. Move over, shock. Fight, flight, and adrenaline had just kicked the doors down. My senses heightened; my heart picked up a runner’s pace. Not because I was using magic, but because I was damned determined to get out of here alive. And I was going to take Anthony and the girls with me. I shifted my grip on the dagger, keeping it low, using the table that was still between me and Frank to block his view of it. What I needed was a chance to throw a spell at him, something like Containment or Hold. Something to buy me enough time to run. Because unless I could knock him out-and I didn’t think my physical reserves were up to bearing the price of that without passing out myself-my best option was to do just what I’d told my father. Run and get the police, the SWAT team, Stotts, and the MERC down here. Fast. “And yet,” Frank said, “blood calls to its own, Ms. Beckstrom, just as magic calls to magic. I have brought you here”-he gestured toward my father’s body with the vial of my blood as if that explained everything-“and you have come. Welcome to the beginning, the birth, of true magic. Life and death as one. As magic, and the world, should always have been.” My father’s ghost traced a very powerful glyph that had pain written all over it. His lips moved in words I could not hear. He threw the spell at Frank. And absolutely nothing happened. Okay, time to do the math. Frank had my dad’s corpse. That made him a grave robber. And if he had my blood, it meant he was in league with Trager. He also had Anthony and the six girls whom I assumed were the kidnapped girls Stotts was looking for. I’d Hounded those hits, so I knew someone had used Pike’s blood and cast the Glamour spells with Pike’s signature. Even as I had Hounded them, I knew something was wrong with the glyphs, something that made me doubt it was Pike’s hand that cast those spells. Pike said he thought Trager used Anthony to cast those spells, but I didn’t think Anthony was that good. He’d have to be a Hand-an artist who could forge magical signatures-and I didn’t think Anthony knew magic well enough to do that. Frank, however, looked like he might be very good at forging someone else’s magical signature. Looked like he might be very good at all things magical. Hells, even my dead father said he was a very powerful man. Powerful enough to use my father. Powerful enough to be screwing around with the gates of life and death. So I had it wrong. Trager was working for Frank, not the other way around. Working to help Frank with this horror-house magical ritual bullshit. “He is working dark magic, Allison,” my dad said. “It is forbidden. Magic that has been mutated by death belongs in death. He is using Holy crap. Zayvion was right. Why hadn’t my dad taught me this stuff years ago? Dark magic. Those who hunger. I didn’t even know what they were, much less what they could do. I was so screwed. “So now,” Frank said, “I will ask you once, politely, to come here and lie down on this table.” He smiled and pointed to the empty table next to my father’s corpse. “Please.” “No,” I said. “No,” my father said at the same time. Well, at least we were in agreement on one thing. The doctor shook his head. “I am so sorry to hear you say that.” He flicked his fingers fast and subtly enough he’d give Kevin a run for his money. His spell radiated so much magic-dark, strange, twisting magic that moved on its own like snakes slithering through the air. I could see it, even without the Reveal spell. It was a huge spell. Strong enough it could knock a hole through a brick wall. And Frank had thrown it with no more trouble than flicking a speck of dust from his shirtsleeve. From the corner of my eye I saw Anthony shudder in pain. What kind of price did dark magic carry? How much more could Anthony take? I held up the knife in one hand and wove Shield in the other, drawing magic from deep within my bones and pouring it into the Shield. I braced for the impact. Instead my dad appeared in front of me and threw himself in harm’s way. For me. It was the most selfless, noble thing I’d ever seen him do. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. Frank’s spell slammed past my father’s ghost, slammed past my Shield, slammed past the bloody dagger I carried, and hit me like a train falling off a mountain. The force of Frank’s spell threw me across the warehouse. I tucked and rolled. Managed to land flat on my back hard enough to knock the wind out of me. Seriously, I should take self-defense classes one of these days. Maybe I’d find a way to stay out of these situations. But, hey, at least I didn’t eviscerate myself with the knife. Trouble was, I’d lost my grip on the knife. It was no longer in my hand. My dad stood above me. “I will not see you fail in this.” Way to talk me up, Dad. That disapproving scowl told me I was in for a world of hurt. He knelt. Shoved his hand in my head. My vision went white for a second. I blinked. The warehouse was back, but I couldn’t see my father. I saw myself-through my ghost father’s dead eyes-on the floor of the warehouse. No wonder Davy had been scared of me. Blood covered my face, following the strange leopard pattern burn marks from dead magic user fingers. Not pretty. Not even close to pretty. My eyes were too wide, hard and pale as cheap emeralds. I had a bad cut under one cheek and my lips were swollen. My hair was a mess. I looked wild. Angry. I looked like I was going to kill someone. No coincidence, that. My father was pushing into me, into my head, taking me over. Oh, hells, no. There was no way I was going to let him possess me. Problem was, I didn’t know how to stop him. I pushed with my heels, scrambling backward, scooting my ass across the floor but unable to get away from him, unable to get to my feet. “Get away!” I screamed. “Get away!” “You were meant for this, born for this,” Dad chanted. “Your blood and mine. Beckstrom blood. The power you carry, the knowledge I carry. I have always known we would do great things, you and I. I have waited for this day.” And over my dad’s babbling that grew louder and louder inside my head, I heard Frank’s footsteps across the wooden floor. Frank bent, reached through my father-right through him-and I moaned, because it stung me too, like Frank was reaching through me. “Open your mind to me,” my father said. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” I said. Frank smiled. “Oh, you can. You can be everything I need.” He pulled me up through my dad and onto my feet. Stuck a needle in my arm. Possessive ghost. Dark magic. Blood magic. Probably drugs on that needle. Holy shit, could this get worse? The pain in my body eased some, leaving my head a little foggy and slow. That would be the drugs. Sensual heat rose up my legs, and I tasted sweet cherries on the back of my throat. And that would be the blood magic. Fabo. “No,” I whispered as Frank pushed me forward in a grip I could not shake. The drugs weren’t helping my coordination any. Everything felt sluggish. Dreamlike. Slow. “Out. Get out,” I said. “It will all be over soon,” Frank said. He wrapped his arm around my ribs and held me up, because my legs weren’t working so good. He shoved me over to my father’s corpse. I threw myself to one side, but Frank was strong and didn’t lose his hold on me. “Be Shit, shit, shit. Frozen in place, I watched Frank let go of me and pull my left arm out over the plate on my dad’s chest. A slash of pain bit my left palm as Frank drew a knife-a pretty little thing a lot like Zayvion’s-across my hand. He tipped my hand over the plate, letting my blood fall freely into the licorice mist. He then poured blood out of the vial over my hand and over the tip of the knife he had used to cut me. I might be frozen, but I could still breathe, could still smell. And that was not my blood in the vial-it was my father’s. Hatred rose like bitter bile and stung the back of my throat. The weird thing was it wasn’t my hatred-it was my father’s. He hated Frank. And hated that Frank was using him. Using him to break open the gateway between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Using him to finally connect the magic of the living with the magic of the dead. Horrors of what breaking the barrier between life and death and letting magic flow freely between the two swam through my mind-my dad’s mind. Somewhere beyond that horror, I heard the cold, angry thoughts of my father wishing he were the one doing this exact ritual but with Frank’s corpse on the table instead. And it was then that I realized Frank was right about one thing. My dad did know how very useful I would be. And even now, in death, he was thinking about his missed chance of using me for his own ends. Thinking that he who opened the gates would be the one who controlled them. I wanted off this crazy train. If I were going to get out of this room, get away from my father, from Frank, now would be a great time to do it. Except I couldn’t feel my feet. It’s hard to run when you have no idea where your legs are. Anthony moaned. Crap. I couldn’t leave him. Couldn’t leave him and the girls. I wondered if my father could feel my emotions, my thoughts like I could feel his. “Lie down,” Frank commanded. He put some Influence behind it. Anthony, the poor kid, whimpered. Of course, I wasn’t in that great of shape myself. Frank’s command filled me with the desire to do exactly as he said. Damn it. I crawled up on the empty table, fighting it, sweating, hating him, hating myself, hating my father. Magic filled me, but if I pulled on it, my dad would be able to reach it-push me aside and use it, use me, and then he could make me do anything he wanted to. But maybe it would be worth letting him use me if he stopped Frank. I looked around wildly. Shadows, slanting light, webs of magic, moaning girls. I twisted so I could see the door. Maybe I could get out. Maybe I could still get away and call the police. The door I had walked through was open. That was weird. I thought it had shut behind me. A man moved into the light of the doorway, silent as a cat’s dream. Dark and shadowed, his skin flickered with silver glyphs, his body crackled with dark fire. Zayvion Jones. Maybe I was imagining him. I really wanted someone to show up and make some sense out of all this. Make Frank stop, make my dad stop. Make this all go away so I could get away, and life and death and the world would be normal again. But Zayvion said he wasn’t following me. Kevin said Zayvion wasn’t following me. So why would he be here? He made his way silently to Anthony’s side, and I looked away from him just in case he was real. Just in case Frank caught me looking at him. Frank was busy weaving a spell between my father’s corpse and me with the tip of the bloody knife and his empty left hand. This was not how I wanted things to work out. But if Zayvion could get Anthony out of here, maybe I could find a way to rescue the girls. I moved my feet, felt the bite of a rope around my ankle. Not a physical binding-a magical one. Frank was a busy little bastard. “You are much like your father, Ms. Beckstrom,” Frank said in his nice-doctor voice while another rope of black snaked out to tighten around my legs. “Intelligent. Willful. And incredibly powerful. If you had simply returned my phone call, we could have gone about this in a much more civilized manner. It could have been very… pleasurable.” Holy crap. Anthony grunted. Frank noticed. Glanced up away from me. Saw, as I saw, Zayvion carrying Anthony on his shoulder, moving toward the door. “Ah, Mr. Jones. The guardian of the gates has arrived. Please return my Proxy.” Frank wove his hands in the air and pulled magic-from my father’s corpse. The magic rose, sticky, wet, thick, not so much glowing as sucking light into it, leaving an afterimage of the rest of the room on my eyes when I blinked. My dad groaned in my head. I felt it too. Frank sucked the magic out of me like a leech sinking teeth in my bones and sucking the marrow. I yelled. From the pain, from trying to warn Zayvion. One of the ghost girls screamed with shrill, childlike terror. I glanced over at the six cots. One of the ghost girls lifted away from the cot, away from the dark chain holding her there, and shot across the room toward Frank. She twisted, thinned, became a bolt of pure magic. Magic that Frank caught in his hand as easily as catching a ball. Magic that he twisted into a glyph and threw at Zayvion. Zayvion cast Shield. Frank’s spell, the spell made of the girl, skittered off it, sparking magic in black and gold. The stink of sulfur flashed through the air. There were only three girl ghosts left. He had killed her. Used her soul and spirit like it was magic. Holy shit. Frank pulled more magic out of my dad, out of me. I yelled along with Anthony’s moan. Since I was busy yelling, I missed seeing the spell Frank cast. But Zayvion countered it. I turned my head in time to see the backlash from the two spells colliding. Bloodred flames flared from floor to ceiling and then fell and hissed like acid as they ate into the floor. That surge of magic made the glyphs on the walls flicker bright, too bright. Then the glyphs went dull. Dead. Nothing but pastel ash. The Wards were broken. The glyphs on the walls dripped down, hit the floor, and then stood up- Holy shit. Those weren’t spells on the walls. They were dead magic users, somehow bent in ways magic was never meant to be bent and forced into the lines of glyphs, the warding spells of Life and Death. Frank had used the dead like they were nothing but fodder for his spells. Used them just like he used the girl’s ghost. Used them like he planned to use me. The room was suddenly full of the Veiled. Only they weren’t nearly as transparent as before. They were so solid, it was hard to think of them as ghosts. Well, except for their empty black eyes and slow, swaying movements. The dead people closest to the ghost girls turned on the girls. The three remaining ghost girls screamed as the Veiled pulled at them, ate away bits of their spirits with greedy fingers. I was so done with this bullshit. Hells, yes, my father could use me. Because I planned to use him right back. And like inviting the wind into a room, my father blew open my mind, settled into those parts of me I thought of as mine-private, safe, sacred-and pushed that aside. He pulled magic through my body, my blood, as easily as water runs through fingers. He chanted. I chanted. His words but my voice, my body. And I understood the words though they weren’t in a language I had ever heard before. They were the words of Closing. Killing. Ending Frank. Ending his dark magic. I could feel my feet. My legs. The Bindings still held me down, but I could sit. I sat, twisting so I faced Frank’s back. Frank, who was busy trying to kill Zayvion. Zayvion stood braced, both hands outward in that tai chi stance again. An amazing sort of Sheild glistened with magic that flowed and changed in breath-taking colors and shapes in front of him, taking forms I had seen only in my dreams. Beautiful. Zay’s magic was beautiful, powerful. And so was the man behind it. Anthony was on the ground behind Zayvion and his powerful Shield. It didn’t look like he was breathing any more. Frank extended one hand toward me, weaving a Sleep spell. My father lifted my right hand. Now And still the ghost girls screamed. So here’s the thing. My dad was in the most private parts of my mind. And he was as open to me as I was to him. I sifted through his knowledge, found what I needed. A spell, a different sort of spell. I drew on magic, traced a glyph with my left hand-the one my dad wasn’t using. And I knew he was right. But I already knew what my father was going to do to me. I’d seen his plan. Once Frank was taken care of, my father would either take over my body as his own, burning away the parts of me that made me who I was, or he would-and I’m a little shaky on the details of this one-use the magic in my blood and the core of my life energy to transfer himself into another body. Frank’s body. Both options would leave me dead. So, fine. In the time I had left, I was sure as hell going to save those girls. The image of the white cross on the building came to me. The image of the words “my baby.” There were families out there waiting for these girls to come home. People who loved them. Maybe I couldn’t fulfill my promise to Pike by looking after his Hounds, but I could at least make sure these girls got home. And if by doing so I screwed up my father’s plans-then sign me up, baby. If I was going to die, I was going to take my dad down with me. I threw every ounce of my will into that spell, threw it at the Veiled-all of them in the room, and it sounded like there were hundreds-howled. “No,” Frank yelled. “Do not destroy them. They are magic-true magic. Do not!” He lifted his hand from what he’d been about to throw at Zayvion and leveled both hands, both spells, at me. The room went black at the edges. I think I saw Zayvion bend, scoop up the dagger I’d dropped, and run toward Frank. I think I saw the Veiled let go of the girls. I think I saw the Veiled crack like old plaster, that strange dark light pouring out of them as they came apart like ice hit by a hammer. And I even think I saw my father’s corpse on the table exhale, his last breath a mist that stank of licorice. I know I smelled blood, fear, sweat, my father’s wintergreen and leather, blood magic’s sweet cherry, Frank’s burnt almond, and Zayvion’s pine. I think I saw the ropes of magic that floated in the air, connecting the girls to my father’s corpse and to me, turn to ash and scatter as if caught by a strong wind. And I realized, with sorrow, that there were only three ghost girls because the other girls, their spirits, had already been used up by dark magic. But even though I saw all this, I didn’t know how to get the remaining girls’ spirits back in their bodies. I trolled my father’s memories, trying to find something I could use. My father was still busy pouring magic into the spell that was wrapping around Frank like a giant octopus and squeezing tight, tighter. A Containment spell would work. A Containment to hold a soul. All I had to do was leave the smallest amount of magic wrapped around the girls’ souls, and it would hold them in a stasis state. I was having a really hard time breathing. I clumsily wove the glyph of Containment left-handed, filled it with a small amount of magic, creating an orb in my hand. I had no idea how to put the girls’ souls into it… No, wait, I knew. I cast a quick glyph for each girl, a glyph of Healing, and Death, but more healing than death. Balls of pastel light formed in my hands. I didn’t know if the spell was right. Didn’t know if it was done. My heart was taking too long to beat. Much too long between beats. Everything was hazy and going black. Somewhere in the back of my head, I heard my father intone the last piece of the Containment spell for me. He willed the balls of light from my palm. The orbs drifted off toward the side of the room where the girls’ bodies lay. I hoped it worked. I couldn’t see them anymore. All I saw was Frank, eyes wide with fervor, chanting, his hand lifted in a spell I did not know, a spell filled with the unlight of dark magic. And just before the spell left his hand, I used my father’s hand-my right hand-to cast a Freeze spell. Zayvion threw himself at Frank. And look at that, Zayvion did have the dagger. On that dagger was my blood, Pike’s blood. Grim satisfaction filled me as Frank held very, very still in my Freeze spell and Zayvion slit his throat with one vicious stroke. A wave of darkness poured over the room, drowning me, sucking me down. I fell so deeply into it that I knew I’d never reach the bottom. But the last thing I heard was my father’s disapproving voice. And I wanted to laugh. He hadn’t set a Disbursement spell either. We were both so completely screwed. |
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