Chenda sagged against my hold, panting.
I eased back. I didn’t want to kill her. Not until I’d freed the others. I was concerned that killing the mystic in a mental manifestation — with all of us still connected to the main spell — would lobotomize us all.
I wasn’t worried about the witches, though.
Keeping hold of the mystic’s wrist, I stumbled to my feet, turning to face Onyx and Jet.
Their cloaked figures were insubstantial. Chenda was losing her hold on the twins. The spell they were building between them didn’t feel any weaker for it, though. I couldn’t take another hit and still hold the mystic.
I had the mystic’s magic in my grasp, still pulling a slow trickle from her to maintain the connection. The problem was that I didn’t actually know how to wield that magic. I wasn’t a telepath.
I gave her a hard shake. She mewed in pain. With her head lolling back, she glared at me with slitted eyes.
“The witches,” I demanded.
Chenda laughed, low and dark.
And I caught the sound of snarling again — Paisley. In pain.
“I can kill you,” I said. “Right now, right away.” I pulled a long draught of Chenda’s magic from her. “Give me the spell to knock the twins out. Out of here and out of the fight in the physical world.”
The mystic gurgled something, then panted in pain.
The witches raised their hands. Darkly tinted magic sparked between their outstretched fingers, licks of black energy jumping between the two of them.
I gave Chenda a sharp shake. If I’d been holding her physical body, it would have dislocated her shoulder.
“Sleep,” she gurgled. “Sleep.”
The pulse of the spell grew under my hand. I flung my other hand toward the witches just as they did the same to me.
“Sleep,” I cried, harnessing the magic the mystic had fed me.
The witches’ spell fizzled. Then their blackened eyes rolled up in their heads and they disappeared.
I waited, my heart pounding, desperately trying to hear Paisley again. I didn’t pick up any sound at all. The air was deadened around me. I glanced down at the mystic. She appeared to be unconscious.
Dragging Chenda with me, I stepped out of the pentagram and through the inner and outer circles. My footsteps made no noise, though the snow should have been crunchy and cold under my bare feet.
Christopher’s prone figure appeared. I moved toward him steadily, allowing the two tendrils of magic that tied my blood tattoos to the mystic’s main spell — her mind trap — to stretch and lengthen behind me.
I would need that binding to free the others. I needed it to stay on this mental plane.
Chapter 11
I knelt at Christopher’s side. He had fallen while crawling toward the outer circle of the mystic’s mind trap. His neck was cranked awkwardly, his cheek pressed into the snow-crusted grass. Carefully maintaining skin contact, I transferred my hold on the mystic, pressing my palm against her forehead. I laid my other hand over the blood tattoos on the clairvoyant’s upper back, fingers spread to either side of the tendril of magic that still tied him to the pentagram.
I might have been able to grasp that magic, to rip it from him. It was my power, after all, siphoned from me into the mystic’s mind trap, and I had physically held the bindings currently attached to my own blood tattoos. But I had more than a sense that doing so might kill the clairvoyant. And me. Or at least destroy our minds.
I could heal from most physical or magical afflictions, but I didn’t want to take any chance on whether that same ability applied to my mind. Not when my mind was currently cracked so wide open that I was somehow physically walking through it while dragging a manifestation of the mystic’s psyche with me.
So instead, I closed my eyes. Siphoning more power from the mystic, I visualized myself sinking into the connection that bound Christopher to the pentagram, just as I’d sunken into the mental manifestation of myself earlier. Magic shifted under my hands, strengthening, deepening. I amplified it, channeling more of myself into the binding.
I opened my eyes. I was standing before the door to Christopher’s bedroom in the main house. That made sense, though I more often found him in the barn or the kitchen.
I reached for the doorknob, realizing that I was still dragging Chenda with me. Though she still appeared to be unconscious, she wasn’t at all heavy. The doorknob wouldn’t turn, so I drew another lick of power from the mystic, channeling it into my palm as if it were a spell and not simply siphoned energy. Then I tried opening the door again.
Magic radiated around the doorframe. I pushed, visualizing using the mystic’s stolen power like a key. The door gave way and I stepped inside the bedroom, dragging Chenda along the fir flooring behind me.
A white-blond boy with golden tanned skin was sitting on the floor. A cot, rather than a bed, had been pushed against one of the walls, all of which were painted gray. The boy was wearing gray sweats, with his feet bare. Neat piles of colorful paper were spread around him.
He looked up at me. His light-gray eyes were wide with wonder, though he was smiling.
Christopher.
Or rather, in this incarnation, Knox.
Around the age of four, just as I’d seen him in the memory the mystic had tried to trap me within, in the cafeteria. The room was an odd amalgamation of Christopher’s bedroom and the room he’d occupied at the compound.
“Emma.” He placed one hand on the nearest pile of paper. One edge of each piece was torn. The empty covers that had once bound the books had been tossed to the side of the room. “I knew you’d come.”
The pages had been torn from children’s books. The children’s books from which Christopher had named us.
He started sorting through the colored pages, placing three pages in front of him, then swapping out one at a time. His magic rose, shimmering across each page. And each time it did so, he nodded and placed that page in a separate pile.
“Knox?”
“Yes?”
“It’s time to go.”
He nodded again, placing the final page. “I know.” He had five neatly stacked piles arrayed around him. “I just had to finish this first.”
“Finish what?” I asked, not sure that I should be lingering, not sure I should be questioning this mental projection of Christopher. There was something terribly intimate about standing in this room, as if I were invading his mind.
Because I was.
I just wanted to release him from the mystic’s hold, and without hurting him. At least not any more than I already had.
He touched the nearest pile of pages, his eyes glowing softly white. “You.” He shifted his hand to the right. “Zans.” He shifted his hand up and to the left. “Aiden.” He looked up at me, smiling gently as he shifted his hand a fourth and a fifth time. “Opal. And Paisley.”
I crouched, completely drawn in against my better judgement. “Our futures?”
“Yes.”
A flash of fear arced through my chest.
Knox regarded me steadily.
I forced myself to ask the question. “Together? Do you see us all together?”
“Always,” he whispered. “I always see you, Socks. And the others arrayed around you. In your care.”
He carefully gathered the piles. Laying them crosswise over each other to keep the groupings separate, he built them into a single pile. The pages he’d deemed to be my future were on the bottom.
Then he picked up the stack and stood.
I straightened as he approached, holding the pile of pages out to me — our futures cobbled together out of children’s books. “These are for me?”
“In your care,” he said solemnly. “As we always were. As we always will be.”
“That’s a lot of responsibility,” I said, though I allowed him to balance the stack on the flat of my hand.
Magic shifted around me, and suddenly twenty-nine-year-old Christopher was standing before me. His hand
was still pressed to the top of the stack, steadying it between our hands. His eyes blazed brilliantly white, then settled into his regular light gray.
The clairvoyant leaned forward, pressing his lips against my ear. “You look just like the first time I saw you, Emma. Sundress. Long, straight red hair. Green eyes blazing with magic.”
“What do you mean … the first time you saw me? In a vision?”
“The morning after we got the blood tattoos,” he murmured. Then he stepped back to scan me, as if comparing me to a mental image he held. “I’d had an intense dream. I think they might have had us all in the same medical bay when they etched our blood and magic underneath each other’s skin. And … connected to all of you, to the Five, I dreamed of a red-haired woman. Bright, vibrant green eyes. A halo of intense white magic slashed through with lightning strikes of gray … you. Emma.” He laughed quietly. “For years, I thought the vision might have been my mother. But now, in this moment, I understand you’re mine. Part of me.”
I didn’t know what to say. Christopher never saw that far into the future, but I had no idea what the binding of the blood tattoos entailed. We had all been drugged — before, during, and after. It was possible that burning my blood, my magic, into his skin, then binding it magically to his nervous system could have triggered a far view of the future. Of me.
A thought occurred to me, and I glanced down at the mystic slumped against my leg. “That must have been when Chenda made the amulets.”
Christopher followed my gaze, then grinned as if he’d just spotted the mystic. “Clever, clever, Fox in Socks.” He gently bent my arm back toward me, until I was holding the pages torn from the children’s books cradled against my chest. Then he brushed a kiss to my cheek. “See you on the other side.”
He reached up behind his neck. The long rope of magic that bound him to the mystic’s mind trap appeared. He traced his hand along the thick tendril. It led to the bedroom door, which had closed behind me.
Grinning at me, Christopher opened the door and walked out of the room.
Magic shifted around me, dimming the bedroom at the edges until it all faded away. I held onto the pages of the children’s books that Christopher had given to me for safekeeping for as long as I could.
I opened my eyes, finding myself kneeling in the snowy grass and gazing overhead at the endlessly dark sky. No stars, no moon. The house loomed before me, illuminated in my mind’s eye. Christopher was gone. As were the ties that had bound him to the pentagram. I still held the mystic.
I could hear a skirmish taking place somewhere beyond the dark shroud of the yard. In the other world, the actual world.
Paisley’s snarls filtered through to me. Magic shifted, lashing against my physical body — the tenor of the twins’ power and Christopher’s were on opposite ends of the scale.
The clairvoyant had joined the fight. And the mystic’s command for the black witches to ‘sleep’ apparently hadn’t held for long.
I wasn’t actually certain that time had much meaning in my mind anymore. I was, however, tired. Thin around the edges.
I straightened. It took more effort than was reasonable, than was logical. I should have reigned supreme in my own mind … strong, powerful … shouldn’t I?
Dragging Chenda with me, stretching the two white tendrils of magic that still bound me to the mystic’s mind trap, I crossed to Aiden. Instinctively knowing that I needed to keep moving, that I couldn’t manipulate this mindscape indefinitely, I reached for the magic wrapped around the sorcerer’s head, steadily pulsing at his temples, before I’d even settled onto my knees.
I drew more power from the mystic. Having done it once already, knowing I could do it again, I closed my eyes and sank into Aiden’s mind.
I was standing outside the study. The hallway was empty. The house unnaturally still, quiet.
Odd. I had thought I would have found Aiden in his pentagram in the barn loft. But I really had no idea how to manipulate the mental dimension, the mental projection, that the mystic had trapped us within. Now that I was clumsily wielding Chenda’s magic, how much of it bent to my perception? And how much of it was Aiden’s psyche? How much had previously been Christopher’s as opposed to my own?
The brass doorknob was glowing. If I looked at it indirectly, I could see a halo of dark-blue magic around it. When I lowered my chin, the knob appeared normal, inert.
I smiled, already knowing that Aiden was trying to break out, trying to break through the mystic’s hold. Just as Christopher had been doing, using the pages of the picture books as he would his oracle cards.
I grasped the handle, opened the door, and dragged Chenda with me into the study.
Other than the bookshelves, the room was empty. The books, the chair, and even the lemon, lime, and avocado plants that normally sat under the grow light in the window seat were gone.
Every available surface — the fir flooring, the wood paneling, even the darkened window glass — was covered in runes.
A single rune, specifically. Finger-etched in blood.
All the markings were subtle variations of the rune that Aiden had been developing to refract involuntary amplification — a combination of a nullifying and a mirroring spell. Each one was outlined in a dark-blue glow that indicated they were all active.
The dark-haired sorcerer stood in the center of the study, bare feet carefully set within a blood-etched pentagram on the fir floor. Bare-chested, he had used strips of his shirt to staunch multiple wounds on both his forearms. Self-inflicted wounds. He had to get the blood he’d used to paint the runes and the pentagram from somewhere.
I took another step into the study, trying to avoid the runes painted across the floor but forced to drag the mystic across them.
Aiden’s eyes snapped open, magic flaring through the pentagram. He had the same rune drawn in blood on his forehead, pulsing blue now. He raised his hands, a spell on his lips, power pooling in his palms. His expression was feral, fierce.
Then he hesitated, raking his piercing gaze over me. “Emma?”
“Yes.”
He slowly lowered his hands. “Are you real, then?”
I tilted my head thoughtfully, knowing I shouldn’t tease him. This wasn’t the time or place. But I had found him. And just the sight of him, the evidence of his relentless focus, filled me with an oddly vicious joy. “You don’t appear to need my help, sorcerer.”
He laughed quietly, his expression becoming edged with a completely different focus. On me. “I like the dress,” he purred. “It looks … thin.”
I glanced down, noting — as he presumably intended — that my nipples pressed through the linen fabric. I laughed, then eyed him archly. “I’m not the one running around half dressed.”
Aiden flashed his teeth at me. It wasn’t quite a smile. And it did all sorts of interesting things to my insides.
“This time you’re not.” He stepped from the pentagram, closing the space between us. Wrapping his hand around the back of my head, his lips crashed over mine.
Carefully keeping hold of the mystic, I matched his ferocity.
He broke the kiss, pressing his forehead to mine, then slowly running his fingers down my neck, across my shoulder, and down my arms. No magic passed between us, so it was just his touch that sent shivers through me.
Aiden stilled, as if just realizing that I was holding onto something myself. He tilted his head just enough to take in Chenda sprawled unconscious, half propped against my right leg.
He laughed, low and dark. “Wily, amplifier.”
“I thought you might like that,” I said.
Still laughing quietly, he crouched, running one hand down my bare leg and tugging a small dagger from the back pocket of his jeans with the other as he did so.
He slashed the mystic’s forearm, opening a shallow cut. Then he dipped his forefinger into the blood that welled there, using it to draw the refraction rune on her forehead. Dark-blue magic ran through the blood as he sealed it with a whisp
ered arcane word.
Dipping his fingers to the cut on the mystic’s arm a second time, he drew the same rune again on his own forehead, retracing the one he’d already placed there in fresh blood. It glowed brightly, then settled into a soft glow of blue energy.
He straightened. Then, not touching me otherwise, he pressed a gentle kiss to my lips. It was infused with the magic he’d called forth.
“See you soon, love,” he murmured. Then he stepped around me, grasping the doorknob.
Power flashed through all the runes in the study, so bright that I had to blink against it. Aiden stepped through the door and disappeared.
The glowing runes slowly faded, along with the walls and the floor that held them.
I was once again kneeling on the snowy grass, but Aiden was gone. I glanced behind me, noting that three tendrils of magic were still anchored to the otherwise empty encircled pentagram. Two white ropes of power attached to me, and one snaking through the yard toward Zans.
I straightened, wavering momentarily under a wash of exhaustion. I felt as though I had just fought a series of short, brutal battles. But I’d barely even wielded my blades yet.
Ignoring the weariness, the weakness, I stepped through the icy snow, still dragging Chenda with me. She was suddenly heavy, even though I understood logically that nothing should have had any sort of weight in a purely mental space. Not if I didn’t allow it.
Still, the magic connecting me to the pentagram thinned further with each step I took, and my right arm and shoulder ached with the strain of holding onto the mystic.
I was tired.
I wasn’t trained in mental warfare, wasn’t actually capable of casting or using magic as I had been trying to do.
And for the first time in my life, I realized it was possible that I wouldn’t make it through this assault. I was draining my own reserves in a way my magic was not meant to function. I had no idea what that might have been doing to my physical body. My mind, my actual brain.
Mystics and Mental Blocks (Amplifier 3) Page 24