by Tania Hutley
Even though I can now see the magic as I’m using it, and the strands make more sense, I’m still terrified of hurting Xander. Since the explosion that killed my mother and stuck her animal magic inside me, my power has been impossible to control. Last time I tried to destroy the demon, I accidentally let Jeqabeel escape into Xander.
Hardly the solution I was aiming for.
I search the mess for a stone I can use to carve a figure, and pick up one that’s a little bigger than a closed fist. That’ll do.
“Stand back.” I lift the stone in one hand. In the other hand, I hold the paring knife in such a way that I can rest my thumb against its blade.
The Blood Council’s shared magic is now inside me along with my own. The council magic is much stronger than mine, but it’s balled up and isolated, like the scary monster under the bed has gotten itself tangled in a bed sheet and all it can do is growl.
Aunt Therese warned me very clearly not to use it, that it would overwhelm me if I did. Even if she hadn’t, I wouldn’t be the slightest bit tempted. Their magic would probably tear me to pieces if I so much as looked at it funny.
Instead I feel for my own magic, the animal and earth magic that’s enough of a tangled mess all on its own, without adding any extra power. They’re both twisting inside me, waiting for the blood that will set them free.
For the spell to work, I need to cut myself, then draw a rune, preferably with my blood. When I only had earth magic, I could control it as it came out, giving me time to cast the spell. With two types of magic, it’s too difficult to control the second type while performing the spell with the first one. The magic is too fast, too eager, too messed up.
Maybe if I draw the rune quickly enough, I can cast a spell with my earth magic before my animal magic does something unpredictable?
“If the spell goes to plan, the stone in my hand will turn into a small statue of a dog,” I tell Xander, who’s hovering beside me.
“What kind of dog?”
“A Labrador. It’s going to be sitting down.”
I picture the dog I want to create. When I have the image firmly in my mind, I drag my thumb along the knife’s blade.
My heart pounding, I quickly draw the rune on the stone. I concentrate on trying to push the animal magic deep inside me, holding it in while letting the earth magic filter into the stone I’m holding.
At first, it seems to work. My earth magic is being directed into the stone, and it starts to morph and change. A little bubble of hope expands in my chest. Maybe I really will be able to do this.
Then my animal magic slams against the barriers inside me. It’s too strong to be contained. With the Council bindings gone, it’s filling me up, expanding exponentially as it strains to be free.
When I used it at the council chambers, I managed to keep the earth strands and the animal strands from getting tangled. But whatever control I had was born of utter desperation. I don’t know exactly how I did it. And now it turns out I can’t replicate it.
As my earth magic expands and swells into the stone, my animal magic is dragged out with it. I manage to hold it back for a moment longer—and then it’s over.
Both sides burst out of me fast and hard. The strands weave around me; my animal magic sparks with unrestrained energy while the earth magic is thick and heavy with power. The force of it sets my body alight. I have as much chance of snatching lightning bolts out of the sky as controlling this much magic.
The air leaves my lungs, and for a moment, I’m breathless. Frozen in place.
I’m in the middle of a vortex, both sides of my magic swirling around me. Any control I had was just an illusion. The earth and animal magic collide and crash against each other, creating sparks of energy that amp up the magic even further.
As I try desperately to pull at least some of the magic back in, the earth magic slams into the stone in my palm so hard it explodes in my hand. I snatch my arm back with a curse, and the remaining stone pieces drop. The magic hits the paving stones with a deafening crash, and dust billows up in a giant mushroom cloud.
Through the fog of debris, a shape rises. The dust half-blinds me, but the shape is huge. Blinking hard, I make out a giant statue of a dog that’s bigger than I am. My magic has created a statue out of the tiny piece of rock I gave it, pulling up more paving stones for good measure. The statue looms over me menacingly. For a moment it feels just like when the pack of possessed dogs attacked me at my house and I accidentally enlarged a savage Rottweiler. Can this dog move? Will it attack me just like the demon-dogs?
Panic flares, and I take a lurching step backward.
My foot snags on one of the broken pavers, and I stumble. I swing my arms, trying to regain my balance, and my animal magic swirls faster around me. I land heavily on my butt and let out a cry of pain.
My last tenuous hold on my magic fractures.
The animal magic arcs toward Xander, then veers away, as if repelled by the demon. It streaks toward the house and disappears.
I feel it pouring itself into the only other living creature nearby.
Ratticus.
Frantically, I try to drag the magic away from Sylvia’s poor rat, but it doesn’t work. I feel it transform him, but I can’t tell how.
Scrambling to my feet, I stagger toward the house, dragging in a lungful of stone dust as I go. It turns my throat into sandpaper. Coughing and hacking, I double over, desperately trying to blink dirt out of my eyes.
Behind me, Xander is coughing too. He opens the back door with one hand, grabbing my arm to tug me away from the dust.
As soon as he touches me, darkness fills my brain. Burning pain, and tendrils of dark magic snake along my skin. The repulsive voice reaches inside me, whispering in my head. “You will have your deepest, darkest desires, Sapphira. I can bring your parents back to life—”
Still coughing, I jerk away from Xander.
“Sorry,” he rasps. “Forgot.”
I stumble inside to the kitchen, and hesitate at the door to the living room. What am I going to find on the other side? Perhaps I could board up the living room and never go in there again? Then I wouldn’t have to see what terrible thing my animal magic has done to poor Ratticus. Best-case scenario, he’s a paving slab. Worst case… I don’t want to think about it.
Behind me, Xander doesn’t realise what I’ve done. He pours us both a glass of water, and when he hands me the glass, I gulp mine down. It soothes my throat, though using my magic has made me feel weak and shaky.
“I take it that didn’t go exactly to plan?” asks Xander.
“Not exactly.” I drain the glass. “It was actually a new low for me. I caused two major disasters.” I glance toward the living room where Ratticus’s cage is.
“Two?”
When I put my empty water glass down, a gritty, dirty handprint is imprinted on it: a souvenir of one of the disasters. I have a sick feeling that the other disaster is going to be far worse.
Ratticus has already suffered. First he watched Sylvia being killed, then he had to relive her death when he shared the memory with me. Then we were attacked by monster dogs trying to kill us. After all that, he deserves a quiet, peaceful life.
But I have to face up to what I’ve done to him.
I walk into the living room, forcing myself to look at his cardboard box in the corner. Or rather, to where his cardboard box used to be. It’s torn into several pieces, which are scattered across the floor, together with his food and water. His wheel lies on its side by the couch, still turning in slow circles.
But where’s Ratticus?
Xander makes a strangled sound. “What the—?”
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Copyright © 2019 by Tania Hutley and Trudi Jaye
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