by Cate Tiernan
He frowned down at me. “Shut up. You’ve had your chance. Now you’re going to do what I want.” My legs felt like blades of grass, unable to support my weight, unresponsive to my hazy commands. At the warehouse door, dank, chilly air wafted out, and with it came an unmistakable impression of corruption and malignancy. Dark magick had been worked here before. Foul, inhuman deeds had taken place. Passing through the doorway reignited my panic, as if crossing the threshold removed my last bit of hope.
Incy let go of me and I fell heavily to the cold, dusty concrete floor. A dull, radiating pain started in my shoulder and snaked around to my chest, making it painful to breathe. He pulled on some rusty chains, and the loading door creaked and groaned, then crashed down like an old-fashioned portcullis. Dust entered my nose and mouth and I wanted to sneeze, but even those muscles seemed incapable of getting organized, and I was left with a nagging irritation in my sinuses.
“I’m sorry we’re ending this way,” Incy said conversationally as he grabbed me under the arms to half drag, half carry me to a wire cage. “It didn’t have to be like this. It could have been you and me. Bread and butter. Sharing your power.” He got me inside the cage—it was an elevator. He pushed the button and the cage rose unsteadily, with screeching cables and grinding gears. It stopped with a heavy jolt that made me lose my balance again, and I toppled against its wire-grate side. Incy pulled the gate open and looped one arm around my waist. We were up on a balcony that ran around three sides of the building, overlooking the main warehouse floor. Ragged-edged shafts of moonlight fell through holes in the rusted metal ceiling and streamed through the broken panes of windows placed high up on the walls. It was freezing in here, as cold as it was out in the open. The air itself was tainted. This place was soiled and unclean, filling me with a creeping revulsion with every breath. Incy had known of this place. What had he done here?
Think, Nastasya, think. You’re so powerful—show us. Think of a spell, any spell, that you could use. Think of something, for God’s sake. Oh, River, help me. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry!
Incy pulled me along, an unwieldy and clumsy baggage. Our feet kicked up dust that filled my nose and mouth, and I would have given a lot to be able to spit, to sneeze. Candlelight flickered ahead; as we got closer I saw the dark, slumped forms of Boz and Katy kneeling on the floor, their hands behind them, chained to two rough wooden support posts some eight feet apart.
I stumbled, seeing their gray faces, hair streaked with sweat. Their chests moved with rapid, jerky breaths. They neither looked up nor gave any impression that they knew we were here. Lightning-fast images of the two of them through the years flashed through my brain. Boz, dressed in a white linen suit, laughing and drinking champagne; Katy, in black from head to toe, holding one finger to her lips as she helped me break into a wall safe. I saw Boz’s white, wolfy smile as his eyes lit on a new mark; saw Katy’s brown eyes gleam as she whirled at a dance, her skirts swinging around her.
“Here. Join your friends. The three of you can sit here and think about what hypocrites you are.” Incy roughly dragged me to a post across from them and pushed me toward it. My injured shoulder slammed against it, making me gasp thickly as fresh pain exploded across my collarbone and back. I slid down, ending on my side almost face-first on the filthy wooden floor. Boz blearily tried to look at me, but after a moment his head dropped again.
“You’ve done this, not me,” said Incy, like he was talking about a stain on my clothes. He pulled out a length of chain and grabbed my shoulders, propping me up against the post, which was maybe twelve inches square, unfinished, studded with old nails and staples, thorny with splinters. As soon as the chain touched my skin, I recoiled as if it was electrified. The chain was spelled. It was antimagick, anti-life. I hadn’t known something like that existed.
Incy wrapped the chain several times around my wrists, and I heard the click of a lock. I felt dizzy, light-headed, the cold chain burning against me. I couldn’t get two thoughts to line up together in my brain. I saw what was happening in front of me, around me, heard Incy talking, the muffled gagging sounds Boz and Katy were making. But it all seemed surreal, as if I were watching a horror movie out of the corner of my eye. My shoulder was still a throbbing pain, and now I became aware of the ache of pulled muscles, starting at my elbows, felt the bare, splintery wood of the post rubbing against my wrists.
“None of this had to happen.” Incy waved a hand around the warehouse, then leaned down in front of me. Even through my haze I saw a yellow glint deep behind the blackness of his eyes. Why hadn’t I seen that yesterday? The day before? Last summer?
“Here’s your chance,” said Incy. “Give me your power, and all this can stop right now. You aren’t using it. If you give it to me, I’ll let Boz and Katy go.” He looked at me. I imagined shooting him the bird. I wished I knew a spell that would let me control one finger on one hand.
I swallowed, almost gagging on the simple action. “Bite me,” I managed thickly.
His mercurial face changed again, and then he was raging, shouting, stamping his feet, making billows of unbearably itchy dust swirl around us. He swung a thick length of chain, whipping it right next to my head, so close that I felt it brush my hair, and all I could do was blink.
“I hate you for making me do this!” he screamed, an inch from my nose. “For what you’re making me do to them!” He lashed out with the chain again, hitting Boz’s post, where it gouged out a chunk of wood.
Incy was incensed, out of control, shrieking and spewing and kicking things. He picked up a hunk of metal and hurled it across the warehouse, where it hit a brittle old window, making it explode.
There was no reason to think he would let us live. I knew this with cold certainty, fear forming pointless, stinging tears in my eyes. He was going to kill us and take our power. No one would miss us. We were old hands at disappearing. People would assume we’d taken other names, gone to other cities. Who would care, anyway? The three of us had left a wake of disappointed friends, hurt and embittered acquaintances. We were losers, and losing us would bother no one.
After everything I had been through, the dozens of times I had cheated death, I would actually die, tonight. I hadn’t, 450 years ago. Tonight I finally would. I was already shaking with cold, and now fresh fear sent a new surge of adrenaline into my heart. I felt jittery, hopped-up and yet immobile, as if I’d drunk a hundred cups of espresso and then gotten sewn into a mummy costume.
Even as Incy ranted, working himself up, I kept picturing River’s face, how she had looked at me with kindness and understanding. I saw Reyn, remembering how angry he made me, how much I’d wanted him, how much I didn’t know about him, how much I should try to understand. Reyn had been there, the day my first life had ended. He had been here in my present, as I’d tried to become yet another new me. I would never see him again. The idea was shocking.
Incy stopped suddenly, standing taut and furious in front of Boz. Boz blearily raised his head and blinked, his eyes unfocused. He was so handsome, even pretty. I’d known him for ninety years or so, seen his looks change through the ages. He’d always been the most handsome man in any room, not in a supermasculine way, and not in a fallen-angel way like Incy. Just blond and fine-featured and twinkly-eyed. Now he was in a stupor, his mouth open, hair mussed and streaked with dirt and nervous sweat. He was bent far forward, putting a painful strain on his shoulders, his hands chained behind the post. He slowly licked his lips, seemed to struggle for a minute.
“Don’t do it, man.” The words were barely decipherable, his voice sounding clotted in his throat.
“Boz.” Incy looked regretful as he knelt next to him. “I’m sorry. I really wanted Nas, but you got in the way.”
Great. That wouldn’t haunt me forever. As short as my forever would be.
Gently, Incy reached out and put both his hands on Boz’s face, framing it with his fingers.
“Give me your power, Boz, old man,” Incy whispered.
Bo
z struggled to swallow, weakly formed the words: “Fu… ck… you.”
Incy’s fingers tightened on Boz’s face. “Give me your power.” His voice was low and deadly.
“No.” I saw Boz’s mouth move, but couldn’t actually hear him. But Incy did. He began to chant, slowly and softly at first, then building in strength and volume. I couldn’t make out any of the words, but even from ten feet away I could feel their vindictiveness, their hatred. My skin prickled as I felt bits of dark magick coalescing, creeping up through the floorboards like insects drawn out by the scent of refuse. It sank down through the holes in the roof, the broken windows, dark wisps of evil and despair coiling through the air like cold, oily smoke.
A regular person would have felt nothing, sensed nothing. But all the hairs on my arms were on end, and I writhed inside as darkness rose.
“Stop,” I whispered, so softly I could barely hear myself. I tried to clear my throat. “Stop.” Incy ignored me. His chanting continued. He had been practicing this, planning this, for a long time. Probably since right after I’d disappeared. Maybe even before.
Katy watched the scene dully, her reactions cocooned as well. Did she understand what was happening? I suddenly felt that as much as I had hung out with Katy, traveled with her, practically lived with her at times, I actually didn’t know her all that well. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, what she would do if she could.
Incy’s smooth tenor became stronger, harsher, his words sounding like bullets, like whips, filled with evil intent. Suddenly Boz seemed to awaken and started to struggle. His shoulders jerked; I heard his chains rattling and grinding against the wood column. His eyes flared, staring at Incy with disbelief.
“Stop!” I said, spitting out the word like a lump of clay. Once more I tried to free myself, with no result.
A sound tore from Boz’s throat, an unintelligible animal sound of pain and fear. “Okay! Okay! Yes! Take it!” he cried, sobbing. “Take it! But stop!”
Incy smiled cruelly and kept singing.
Boz started screaming, the sound deadened and choppy. His eyes bugged out, the pupils filling the blue irises like a black oil stain. Horror filled me as I saw true evil stripping Boz away from himself. I remembered the sight of Reyn’s brother being flayed by my mother, during the siege. Her words had been dark and terrible like this, her face almost unrecognizable. She’d raised her hand, snapped it out at the raider, and her amulet had seemed to glow with a frightening power. The raider’s skin had burst from him, shredding through his clothes and leather armor, his chain-mail shirt. I’d watched dumbstruck as he’d stood there like an anatomical statue, raw muscle and sinew and bone, his eyes huge and surprised without their lids, without brows. It hadn’t killed him, of course. Sigmundur had leaped forward and severed the raider’s naked head, and that had killed him.
My mother’s power had been as dark as this, as evil, though she was trying to save us, her children.
“Stop!” I said, the word sounding like a sob, and even that sapped my strength, made me feel like collapsing in the dust and passing out for a hundred years.
Still Incy chanted, his voice victorious now, his face flushing with triumph and life, eyes glittering. The air felt polluted, defiled, as if I were breathing illness, breathing in wretchedness and despair.
Incy’s voice rose in a crescendo of exhilaration. His hands pressed against Boz’s face so hard that the skin glowed white around his fingertips. Tears ran out of my eyes and down my cheeks.
Boz’s back arched. His voice was raw and strangled. Katy slowly turned her head toward him, watching him uncomprehendingly. Incy shouted his last few words, then jumped up, arms raised, standing like a matador who’d just killed a bull for the crowd.
Boz’s voice broke off abruptly. Just ten feet away from me, his face… crumpled inward on itself, as if deflated. I gasped, my stomach heaving at the sight. Boz’s shoulders folded in, his head sinking onto his chest in a grotesque, unnatural way. His skin was gray and powdery, withered and wrinkled beyond recognition. His body slumped forward, held only by the chains binding his reedy, stringlike hands. It was as if Incy had sucked Boz’s actual soul out, leaving a desiccated, inhuman husk, a repulsive, empty skin that had once been my friend. Everything that Boz was, everything he had been, everything he had done in his life—it was all gone, forever.
I’d never seen an immortal die without having his head cut off. It was stunning, for some reason hitting me so much harder than the odd occasion when I’d seen a human die. I hadn’t known it could be like this. Incy had known.
The air crackled with magick and darkness. It felt sharp, barbed, painful, and disgusting all at once, all around me. I tried not to breathe in the foulness, almost retching from its noxiousness. Incy was laughing, dancing around, so full of Boz’s life and energy that he couldn’t stand still.
“I am invincible!” Incy shouted, whirling and leaping near Katy and me. “I am invincible!”
I tried not to throw up with revulsion and dread. I looked over at Katy and behind her dull stillness I saw terror and comprehension. She knew beautiful, selfish, silly Boz was dead, knew that something unspeakable had just happened. And would happen to her and to me. Either way, one of us would have to watch it again.
She started crying then. Her shoulders, pulled back so painfully and awkwardly, shook. She choked on her tears, gagging like I was, and at one point seemed to pass out. Then her head rose again, tears streaking the dirt on her face. Her mouth opened but closed without saying anything. I’d seen her drunk before, and sick; laughing hysterically, crying with shared emotion as people all around us whooped in the streets on V-Day. I’d never seen her like this, disheveled, dirty, dopey, well past fear, well past terror. I wished I could comfort her.
Still Incy danced around us, vibrant with power, alive with Terävä magick, laughing maniacally, rubbing his hands together.
Finally he whirled to a stop in front of me, looking unholy with a terrible, unnatural beauty. “Nastasya—you’re next. Give me your power, like ol’ Boz here, and Katy won’t have to buy the farm. Deal?”
I stared at him. Did he mean it? Could I save her? But… what would he do with my power? Nothing good. What a choice. What would River want me to do?
CHAPTER 24
New Year’s Eve felt like hundreds of years ago. I had danced in a circle with everyone at River’s Edge, danced around a fire and felt magick rise in me like a fountain, like a sunrise. I had tried to cast darkness out of me.
Afterward Reyn had waited for me. In the snowy woods I had reached for him and he had kissed me. He’d been so warm, so strong. He’d told me what he wanted—me—and asked if I wanted him, too. I’d been an idiot, a scared idiot. I had learned so much there, but it had come at me like unrelated bits and pieces: crystals here, herbs there, stars, names for things, spellcraft, oils, and moon phases. I’d been so stupid that none of it had fit together; none of the pieces had been made into a stained-glass window of understanding. If I could try one more time…
“What do you say, my love?” Incy’s face was glowing, as perfect and eternal as that painting I’d seen in the Met, full of stolen life and energy.
His voice snapped me back to the appalling present, with my muscles seizing and cramping, my brain lit and frantic, this unnerving binding spell wrapping me tightly in victim cords. I stared up at Incy, focused on his face. A word floated into my consciousness, indistinctly at first and then forming more completely: fjordaz. Fyore-dish. It was an ancient word for what Incy was stealing—somehow, instantly, I knew that. He’d taken Boz’s fjordaz.
Where had I heard that before? My mother? Yes. It had been a word in the song she sang to call her power to her. I remembered her strong, lovely voice singing, and the word fjordaz being woven in. Was she calling on her own power? Trying to subvert someone else’s? I closed my eyes, trying to think.
“Fine!” Incy shouted. My eyes popped open as he pulled out an old sword, its blade inscribed with symbols t
hat made my flesh crawl. The metal glinted in the candlelight as Incy hefted it. “Did you know there’s more than one way to skin a cat?”
My brain struggled to follow his thoughts.
“With Boz, I actually ripped his power away while he was alive, just to see if I could.” Incy smiled, showing teeth. “And it was incredible. I hope it was good for you.” He did a few dance steps, tapping the sword on the ground like a cane. “But if I just whack Katy’s head off, I’ll be able to grab her power out of the air. So, easier, eh?”
“Wait!” I got out. I’d been kneeling all this time on the cold floor, and my knees burned and throbbed with pain. “Wait!”
“Wait? You want to think about it? No.” Incy bounded over to Katy and raised the sword above her head. She blinked several times, looking up at him, and I saw her try to move, try to stand. It all seemed surreal, a bleary recollection of a nightmare that I would soon wake from.
“No!” I couldn’t shriek, but I made my voice as loud as I could. It was garbled, like I was yelling through a tunnel of felt. “No, Incy, wait!”
Katy was gagging, unable to sob. Her eyes were wide, still disbelieving.
Incy looked at me. “You are making me do this,” he said clearly, and brought the sword down.
“Katy!” I choked out, even as I heard the unexpectedly loud thwack. Everything in me bolted forward until the deadly chains yanked me back. Katy’s inarticulate shriek stopped.
My mouth hung open as I saw Katy’s head drop to the floor and roll slightly, facing me. Her eyes looked at me, slowly blinked once, and then glazed over, like scum forming on old milk. A gush of blood, vivid red, erupted from her neck and pulsed outward several times with her heartbeats. In a split second I was back to the night when my entire family was slaughtered. There had been so much blood then, too. I had walked through it, my felted wool slippers squishing in the soaked carpet. Now I stared as Katy’s blood, red and shining on the old warehouse floor, flowed toward me, making rivulets through the dust. The heavy, coppery smell hit my nose, filled my mouth.