by Cate Tiernan
My guts heaved. I leaned sideways and hurled, my stomach convulsing over and over. The drinks I’d consumed just hours ago burned with bile at the back of my throat.
Incy had been chanting during this, but now he stepped back quickly to avoid getting the spreading blood on his shoes. He was breathing hard, little puffs of smoke visible in the weak moonlight. His eyes shone when he looked at me, and he seemed amazed, impressed, giddy that he had actually done such a heinous, ruinous thing.
“Are you happy now?” he asked. Blood dripped off the sword that dangled from one hand. “You see what you made me do? That’s your fault!” He gestured at Katy. “She didn’t have to die! You could have saved her! But your selfishness killed her!” His words would have stung even more if he hadn’t looked so exhilarated.
That was when my hatred of him began to override his binding spell, just a bit.
“I hate you!” I said, my tongue still feeling thick but my voice stronger than before. Incy reeled back in shock, whether from my words or my ability to say them, I didn’t know. But it was pouring out of me now, the way Katy’s blood had poured out of her.
“I hate you! I hate everything about you! You’re crazy! Evil! Drunk on power!” I was going to die anyway—might as well let it rip. I put all the coldness and loathing into my voice that I could summon.
Incy’s face contorted with rage. “Shut up! You’re the dark one! You’re evil, all the way down to your shriveled little soul!”
“I used to think so. Used to fear it,” I spit. Speaking was still difficult, not fluid, and required effort, but I could get words out. “Everything was going wrong, and I thought it was me! But it wasn’t! I’m fine! It was you, all along! You’re the dark one!” I wanted to sob with relief at that realization—assuming it was true—but since I was about to die, there wasn’t much point.
“Shut up!” Incy yelled again, waving the bloody sword at me. “You don’t know what you’re saying! You love me! I’ve done everything for you!”
I gaped. “Love you? Are you insane? Look around! Look what you’ve done! Look what you’re doing to me!” My chains rattled and scraped against my post. I felt the sharp sting of wooden splinters digging into my wrists.
Incy did look around, and a moment of confusion crossed his dark, handsome face.
I shook my head. “I can hardly imagine the Incy of the past, my friend,” I said. “Every memory I have of you is spoiled, uglier than I remembered. I want to erase you from my past, erase every single thing about you.” I spoke these true, hurtful words more calmly, and it pushed Incy over the edge.
Two bright blotches of anger rose on his face. “You don’t mean that!”
I nodded, my head feeling like it weighed about fifty pounds. “Oh, trust me, I do, Incy.”
“Yeah?” With an enraged bellow, he leaped at me, swinging the sword. I could barely flinch the slightest bit, snapped my eyes shut for the blow. Instead the sword hit my post with great force, shaking it, sending stinging reverberations through my hands.
It took him a second to dislodge the sharp blade, and I wished so much that I could swing my feet out and knock him down. I pictured hitting him, over and over, pictured picking up the sword….
He got the blade free, stepped back, and pointed it right at my face. He held the tip, still slick with Katy’s blood, a few inches from my eyes. “You hate me, huh? Then I won’t even pretend to feel guilty about taking your power.”
My chin lifted. “You can’t have it! I won’t let you.”
Incy giggled, his laugh becoming disturbing, highpitched. “Like you can stop me.”
“I can!” I bluffed, but Incy wasn’t fooled.
He pointed his finger at me and said a few words, and with the next breath I sagged heavily, barely able to move even my eyes. He’d strengthened the binding spell, and I wanted to howl with frustration and rage. My eyes stung with tears again and I couldn’t believe that he would win this way, that I couldn’t fix this.
“It would be better if you were giving me your power,” Incy said conversationally. Using his hand, he stooped over and began to trace Katy’s blood into the shape of a big circle around us. Apparently taking my power required more of a setup, more preparation than for Boz or Katy or a regular person. The horrible tang of blood, plus the stench of alcohol and vomit, made my stomach heave again. “But I’m sure I can take it, even against your wishes. In fact, it will be an interesting challenge.”
I wanted to scream, but my jaw felt rubbery and too big for my face.
Before Incy closed the circle, he put four large chunks of hematite at the four corners of the compass. Then he took more blood and drew a large, upside-down star in the middle of the circle, making a pentacle. I’d seen Anne use one in healing rituals. Like everything else, it wasn’t dark in and of itself. Everything can go both ways, light and dark. It depends on the user’s intention.
Next Incy set up eight black candles and four purple candles and lit them all with a regular silver cigarette lighter. The additional candles made the whole tableau even more sickening: Katy’s blood was now a brighter red, Boz’s crumpled, dried-apple face looked faintly greenish. The lights cast deep shadows into the corners of the huge warehouse. I wished a traffic chopper would go by overhead; the crew could report a suspected vandalism, and the cops would come….
“All that lovely power,” Incy was crooning. “Nas’s lovely, lovely power. Mine, all mine. I’ll be so strong. Miss Edna will be amazed. Miss Edna might even be scared.” He cackled.
“Who’s Miss Edna?” My tongue was swollen in my mouth, reluctant to form words. I felt both hyperaware and still cocooned. Each second was taking forever to get through, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t even feel my hands anymore.
“It will be delicious.” Incy’s voice was singsongy, childish. “Delicious and nutritious.” He straightened and looked at me. “Miss Edna. Miss Edna is… very old. Very powerful. But not as old and powerful as her master.” He waved a hand around. “In fact, this warehouse belongs to her master.”
Holy shit. “Her master?” Did we even have stuff like that?
Incy giggled again and went back to preparing his dark spell.
“Who’s her master?” My tongue still felt thick; it was still hard to speak.
Frowning, Incy shook a finger at me. “None of your concern! Now shut up!”
A master?
“I will be so strong, so strong,” Incy sang. He stopped at each piece of hematite and said words over it, words that sounded full of oozing greed and perverted desire.
I would be dead soon. That was an odd realization. There were times during my 459 years that I had wished I were dead, definitely. But it was only now—this year, this month, this day—that I even knew what it meant to be alive. That I even had a purpose in living. I had seen the future as a huge, gaping maw of time, stretching pointlessly, endlessly forward. Now my entire future would be wrapped up within the next hour. It was… so unexpected.
If only River—
Then a thought slammed into my head, ripping through the fog. River was incredibly strong because she was of the Genoa house of immortals. Also because she was really old and had studied magick deeply for centuries. But a lot of it was just being born into that house. I had been born into the Iceland house of immortals. I was just like River. Potentially just as strong as River. Of course, I was completely untrained, completely lacking in knowledge, and a total ignorant screwup besides. But. I was the sole survivor of the House of Úlfur the Wolf. My power was why Incy had wanted me in the first place. If he could access my power, why couldn’t I?
The idea was stunning, as if I’d just had champagne thrown in my face. Thoughts started firing with organized clarity for the first time since Incy had kidnapped me. With great effort I put aside my grief and disgust over Boz’s and Katy’s deaths, and instead I looked at Incy. He was going from candle to candle, singing a short verse over each one. He looked solemn and self-important and deeply happy. Unchar
acteristically focused and determined. He’d never wanted anything this much in his entire life.
I was strong. Superstrong. Unnaturally strong. I thought back to Helgar. I’d worked for her as a housemaid in Reykjavik when I was in my early twenties and already a widow. It had been Helgar who had recognized me as immortal, and told me so, to my astonishment. She had told me about our magick, how we were born in darkness and lived in darkness, and that was how it was. That had been my truth for four and a half centuries. Now, at this advanced age, I was clinging to a new truth: that we can choose to be light or dark, good or evil. It was such an astonishing truth, with so many implications. I wanted to have days just to think about it instead of just minutes to regret being so long unenlightened.
Helgar had described our magick as a black snake, coiled inside us always. When we made magick, we opened our mouths and called on the snake.
I knew only a few basic spells, and I couldn’t even remember them. My black snake was sleeping.
Incy closed the circle, looked at me intently, then knelt in the center. He put his hands over his eyes and started to chant.
I am superstrong. I have huge power, like River.
I opened my mouth.
That was the extent of my plan. I let my eyes unfocus and thought about my power, the few tiny spells I knew, the classes I’d taken. I thought about my moonstone and realized with shock that it was in my pants pocket. I’d put it in there automatically out of habit. I thought about my moonstone, how much I loved it, how it felt like a part of me.
Okay, black snake, I thought for the first time in my life. Calling you now. Then I thought, Black snake, yuck. Make it a white snake. No. It was my power, and it was going to be… a dove, a white dove for me, dammit. Okay, white dove, white dove, white dove… come to me.
I closed my eyes and saw Reyn’s face scowling at me. Don’t be a pansy-ass, he seemed to be saying. Just summon it already! Quit relying on everyone else to do stuff for you!
Incy now crossed his hands in front of his mouth. The timbre of his song changed. The air felt colder to me, more malevolent. Once again I was aware of dark magick seeping through the floorboards like foul, chitinous creatures, coming in the broken windows like an ill wind, slipping down through the rusted holes in the roof along with the innocent moonlight.
Hvítr dúfa. White dove, in the language of my birthplace, the language of my parents. Hvítr dúfa, come to me. Would it work if I wasn’t calling it a black snake? I didn’t know. I just knew that if I pictured a black snake coming out of my mouth, I would hurl again.
Hvítr dúfa… come to me.
My thoughts broke up as if static was interfering. Incy’s song was growing louder. What had I been doing? Why was I so cold? There was darkness everywhere, coming closer to me like waves, licking around the edges of the circle.
Oh, hvítr dúfa. Think, Nas, keep it together. I started murmuring anything, whatever came into my mind. I hoped it was the chant I used to call my power, but I had no idea at this point. I was exhausted, my cobbled-together energy seeping from me.
I had my moonstone. My mother had had a moonstone. I forced myself to keep making sound, keep the image of a strong white dove in my head, but it was fading in and out and I wanted to cry.
The black fingers of darkness were getting closer, closer. Soon they would be tapping at my feet, my head, my hands, scratching me, worming their way under my skin. Soon I would feel them sidle up to my brain and begin to edge inside, begin to pry their way into my thoughts, my soul.
Once again I sang to call on my ancestral power. I let go of my physical pain, my emotional anguish. I was power. Breathe in, two, three, four…. Hvítr dúfa… my dove. My dove. My white dove of power. My heritage, my birthright. My mother. My father. Iceland. Was I imagining things, or was my moonstone getting warmer? I kept murmuring, singing under my breath, keeping one eye on Incy. He was standing now, his arms out to his sides. His voice was strong, its smooth clarity debased by the evil intent of his song. The words were foul and ancient, had been used to wreak death and destruction for millennia. With barely controlled panic I felt the darkness around me gelling, thickening.
Incy was reaching a crescendo. His face was covered with sweat, his eyes were wild and unseeing, but his joy was evident. He raised his hands to the ceiling and slowly turned in a circle.
His spell touched me like glacial air off an arctic ocean. I shook with cold and closed my eyes, breathing out my chant of power, feeling that I would never be warm again. I was a conduit, a vessel to be filled by my family’s heritage. I wasn’t taking power from Incy, from the wooden floor, the night air. I was channeling it, letting it move through me. I would not give up. I wouldn’t let him win without a fight. I wouldn’t let him or anyone else take what was mine. My power would be mine forever. The cold was creeping over me like strangling vines. When I opened my eyes, my vision was blurring. Soon the darkness of Incy’s mind would slide down my throat, go into my ears, my eyes, and it would all be over.
Haft, haft, efta gordil, efta alleg, I sang. The words had been ancient before my parents were born, crafted by some Old Ones at the beginning of magick. Hvítr dúfa, eilil dag…myn hroja, myn gulfta… my white dove. I pictured it, pictured every feather, its eyes black like mine. It was my power. I controlled it. My power was boundless! It was in the wings of my dove, so strong and light, in the white feathers, fanned out like the sun’s rays. My dove was coming at my call, as its different incarnations had come at the calls of my ancestors for centuries. It was so much stronger than Incy’s patchwork, stolen fjordaz. This was mine, down to my bones, my blood.
Incy was shouting now, turning around and around. With each revolution, the dreadful coil around my neck grew tighter. I was going to faint. Suddenly Incy stamped his foot and stopped still. He brought his arms down hard, as if silencing an orchestra.
My vision faded. I could no longer see. A garrote of dark magick squeezed my throat….
Hvítr dúfa, I release you! I release you! In my mind I pictured throwing my hands in the air, releasing the power of my clan… and then, to my shock, a huge surge of power shot through me, electrifying every cell in my body! My back arched violently, yanking my hands hard against the rough wooden post. As if I’d been hit by lightning, my hair stood on end, my skin burned and felt like it would split. My nose filled with blood, and a piercing pain in my ears made me cry out. I felt something leave me, something huge and tangible, as if I’d conjured an immense dust devil that was spinning away from me to do my bidding.
In a split second Incy’s binding spell was broken: I was wide awake and shimmering with generation upon generation of immortal power. The chain binding my hands burst free, sending ruined metal everywhere.
Six feet away, Incy’s circle exploded. The candles snuffed out; the hematite skittered across the floor. Incy jolted as if slapped, knocked almost off his feet. He swayed, caught himself, and stared at me, mouth open in shock.
I couldn’t believe it myself. I was filled with both exultation and humility.
“You will never get my power!” I hissed, my shoulders stretching painfully. As sensation came back into my hands with a tingling burn, I wanted to cry, and my leg muscles screamed as I scrambled to my feet as fast as I could. “You will never be strong enough! You’re pathetic!”
With a bellow of rage, Incy lunged for me. His hands closed around my neck and I suddenly realized that my power was gone, used up in that one burst. I didn’t know enough to sustain it, to come up with something else.
Shit, I thought as I tried to kick him, cursing him out, saying every awful thing I could think of. “You’re a murderer, you’re crazy, I hate you, I will always hate you—” But he was stronger and he started to choke me.
“How dare you fight me!” Incy snarled. “How dare you try to be greater than me! Don’t you get it? I’m the reason you were such a spectacular screwup at the puritans’! I’m the one who made your life turn to sawdust! I wove poison into your exi
stence, to show you how much you didn’t belong there, how much you needed me! But you still didn’t see it!” He was rattling my head on my shoulders, whipping it back and forth. I felt dizzy and sick and tried to grab his hands, his wrists. In between head snaps, Incy tightened his hands around my throat, squeezing and squeezing. I coughed, trying to suck in air. My lungs started aching and I felt light-headed.
“Screw you!” I got out weakly, then bit my tongue as he shook me. Crap! “I hate you! You’re a failure! A loser! A poser!”
“You’re the failure!” he snapped back. “A disgrace! Your parents would be ashamed of you, your weakness! They would have wanted you dead themsel—aighh!”
Okay, he might have been stronger than me, but he had one crucial vulnerability, am I right, ladies? Kudos to me for remembering it. In the next second, I brought my knee up into his junk as hard as I could. He froze, then made a strangled sound. His hands fell away from around my neck and he sank to the ground, curling up and dry-heaving. It was like magick!
This was my chance. I leaped over him, twisting my still-numb ankle painfully on the awkward landing. I swept up the sword where he’d dropped it, then stood over him. His eyes bugged out and he tried to kick at me, tried to get up, only to stall, wincing and whimpering in pain. Sweat dripped off his brow and he looked ashen.
“I’m going to kill you!” he managed, fury making the veins on his forehead pop out.
“I’m the one holding the sword, genius!” I snarled. He struggled to get to one knee, thrusting his arm out at me. I raised the sword, thinking of what he had done to my life, what he’d done to my life at River’s Edge. In the distance I thought I heard thuds and creaks, but every sense was exploded from my magick surge, and I couldn’t trust my ears.
“You deserve to die!” I said, feeling mighty and invincible. “After all you’ve done. You killed Boz and Katy! You almost killed me!”