by Jayne Faith
The healers worked through the night, and at some point I drifted off for a few minutes. I awoke to Deb’s hand on my arm. She had me lie down and performed some light healing, which lulled me into the floaty space between sleep and wakefulness.
“How are the others?” I asked after she finished.
I sat up, feeling some of the fog of magical exhaustion lifting. We weren’t doing deep healing, to avoid waking the soul-hunger, so I was still chilled and a little slow thinking.
“They’re sleeping now. Real sleep, not a burnout coma,” she said.
“Oh. That’s good.” I scrubbed my hands up and down my face. “How did you guys end up in the yard? When the Baelmen attacked?”
“Lynnette wanted to do a little ritual while we waited for you,” Deb said. “For strength. We were out there when they came.”
“I’m sorry, Deb.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “No, don’t be. If we’d been on the road when the Baelmen attacked us, it would have been so much worse. We would’ve been separated in different cars, maybe even miles apart. Because we were waiting for you, we were delayed. But it meant we were together. We were able to fight them together as a coven. And Rogan and Damien . . .”
She gave a little sigh.
“I don’t understand where all the Baelmen came from,” I said. “We’re still, what, hours away from the official new moon?”
She looked at her phone and frowned. “Actually, we’re right on top of the new moon.”
I stood abruptly, swiveling around and searching for Lagatuda. Not finding him among the people sitting and milling in the main living spaces, I went out to the back yard.
I found him holding a little notepad and pencil, making notes. The crime scene people were still working, snapping pictures, recording video, and taking samples of the Baelman gore left behind in the grass.
“Hey.” I hurried over to him. “We just hit the new moon. What’s the word from Nevada? Is Jacob Gregori cooking anything out there in the desert or what?”
He looked up, his eyes distracted for a moment. Then his gaze sharpened, and he shook his left sleeve back to check his wristwatch.
Before he could respond, his jacket pocket began blaring a harsh emergency signal. He pulled out his phone and began running toward the house. I wheeled and ran after him, trying to catch any snippet of what was going on.
Deb stood up, alarmed.
“What’s going on?” she said.
“I don’t think this is over. He’s on the phone with Nevada!” I said to her over my shoulder as I followed Lagatuda out through the front door.
There was a fancy, high-tech SCSI van like the one that had been parked outside Jennifer’s house on the curb, and Lagatuda was beelining toward it with his wool trench coat flapping around his long legs.
I skidded to a stop next to him as Barnes came out of the van.
Both of them were shouting into their phones, and my attention ping-ponged between them.
“You’re estimating how many of them?” Lagatuda demanded.
Barnes was shaking her head. “. . . containment percentage can’t be correct . . .”
“How long do we have?” Lagatuda asked and listened for a second.
Then he lowered his phone, even though whoever was on the line was still speaking. His eyes were full of dread.
“We need to secure the women,” he said to me. “A horde of Baelmen is headed here.”
“How long?” I echoed his question.
He blinked a few times. “I don’t know how it’s possible, but they’re moving at a rate—”
“When will they get here?” I interrupted.
“We’ve got twenty minutes. Twenty-five tops. They’re estimating hundreds of creatures.”
Chapter 27
PART OF THE Nevada team had been recalled here, but some had already been stationed near the Gregori Industries property in the desert.
The SC people were scurrying around red-faced and shouting into their phones. I left the bureaucratic chaos behind and sprinted back into Lynnette’s house. I found her and then frantically waved Damien over. Rogan trailed behind him.
“We’re not done,” I said, my heart pounding like a jackhammer. “Gregori hatched a horde of Baelmen in Nevada, and they’re headed here now.”
Lynnette’s mouth dropped open, and her makeup-smudged eyes widened.
“But the women.” She gestured toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms where the witches were recuperating.
“Yeah, we’re not going to be able to rely on collective magic. New plan.” I glanced at Rogan. “You up for this?”
His brows twitched up in anticipation, and his eyes gleamed. “Oh, yes.”
He and I were the only ones who stood a real chance against the horde. He couldn’t be killed, and I was pretty sure my reaper wasn’t going to let me die, either. The reaper couldn’t keep me from frying my brain if I pushed myself into the danger zone of magical burnout, but we’d be sure to put up a hell of a fight up until that point.
I turned back to Lynnette and Damien. “You two are the strongest crafters here, and you’re in decent enough shape to keep slinging magic if you have to. Work out a plan with whoever else is still standing to defend this place from the inside. Rogan and I are going to be out there. I assume SC will gather all the forces they can, but we’ve only got twenty minutes, and I don’t know how fast they can slash through the red tape.”
Lynnette clapped her hands sharply and began hurriedly waving over the other witches, including Deb. My best friend listened to Lynnette for a moment and then Deb’s eyes found mine. She looked terrified.
I blinked hard and turned to Rogan. “Okay. We need a strategy that doesn’t rely on huge amounts of magical power because I’m a little lacking in that area.”
“We have other tools at our disposal,” he said. If I didn’t know better, I’d guess he was relishing the thought of this fight. Or maybe he was hoping it would finally be his end, and he could escape his earthly form and get back to the in-between.
“Demons,” I said. “Would arch-demons be any kind of match for Baelmen?”
“Depends on who’s driving them,” he said. “How many can you control at once?”
“Uhh . . . I’ve actually never driven an arch-demon before,” I admitted. “You?”
There were the sounds of sirens in the distance, and I heard voices on megaphones out front. It sounded like they were trying to initiate a lock-down protocol in the neighborhood. At least it was early on Halloween morning. I couldn’t bear to think about what might happen if the timing were different, if the streets were full of little kids out trick-or-treating.
“A few dozen,” he said. “Maybe more if I’m really on.”
I gaped at him. “A few dozen? Do you realize that makes you one of the most highly skilled necromancers in the world? You might even give Phillip Zarella a run for his money.”
He modestly shrugged a shoulder.
“Okay, we’ve gotta tell SC so they can inform everyone that we’re going to have demons working on our side.” I beckoned him to follow me outside. “Last thing we need is to have a Strike Team race in here and try to shoot down our weapons.”
We informed Barnes that Rogan would be driving some arch-demons and told the detective to make sure everyone understood that unless an arch-demon went for a human the Rip spawn were to be left alone. Her mouth pinched in an unhappy grimace, but she nodded.
“There’s only one problem,” Rogan said. “I doubt there are that many arch-demons just roaming around here. In fact, there may not be any.”
“Shit.” I ground my teeth in frustration. “Wait, I think Lynnette might be able to help.”
I could practically feel the clock ticking down as we ran back inside and looked for the exorcist witch. I explained our plan and our problem.
She nodded, looking grim. “I’m going to have to be out there with you to open a rip and summon arch-demons through it. I can’t do
it from within the house.”
I didn’t like the implications at all—either that she’d be outside and exposed, or that she could so readily produce a bunch of arch-demons for Rogan to drive. But it was what we needed, and I’d worry about the implications later. If we all survived.
Lagatuda burst through the front door. “We’ve got about eight minutes before the horde reaches the city limits. We’re going to be on lockdown in our armored vehicles out front. Three mages are going to be projecting to this location, and they’ll do what they can to help.”
Mages projecting . . .? I didn’t have time to ask for an explanation.
Lynnette started her own lockdown that erected magical shields over the doors and windows. Rogan and I followed her out into the backyard, and she shielded the door behind us.
“I’m going to open the rip directly overhead,” she said, her eyes already unfocusing as she started to go into trance. “It might provide some cover from the horde, but it also puts us at risk because the arch-demons will be coming through very close. I hope you know what you’re doing.” She flicked a glance at Rogan.
He gave a single nod, already turning his attention within. Lynnette raised her hands, and above us a streak of black appeared, slashing a few feet across the pale light of early morning that illuminated the sky. I could see her lips moving but couldn’t hear the words. The black line appeared to smoke, and it writhed like a snake. Then the center of it split open and began to widen. The smell of brimstone and death filled my nose, and my stomach tightened into a hard ball.
The rip widened, and the black smoke around the edges was shot through with bolts of neon blue. I felt the brush of magic. It stung my bare skin like lemon juice in a cut, and my eyes watered.
My reaper was responding, and the shadows framing my vision danced furiously. The cold, sickening feeling of the blood-red magic began to fill me, too. In the next blink I stood in the gray swirl of the in-between, where Rogan was a spectre bathed in blood-red power. I looked down to find that I appeared the same.
A low whir in the air pulled my attention to the world of the living. The noise swelled. I tipped my head back to look around the edges of Lynnette’s rip.
High above, a moving dark blot smeared across the innocent pale blue of the pre-dawn sky. The blob was descending. The roar of the Baelmen horde’s wings began to beat against my eardrums. It was starting to circle downward, forming a spiral of winged bodies that were indistinguishable from each other.
A black shape sprang through the rip, and I sensed Rogan reaching out for the arch-demon’s mind. When the creature streaked upward to meet the leading edge of the horde, I knew he’d assumed control. Three more arch-demons came through, as if birthing from their dimension into ours, and Rogan caught their minds and sent them upward.
I held my whip in my hand, but if the horde got close enough for me to use it, we’d be doomed.
When the horde ripped the four arch-demons to nothing, my heart plummeted. There were too many Baelmen.
A white point of light streaked upward and then burst like a firework. A second later a booming report shook the ground and sent us staggering. Expanding like a giant web, the white light scooped at the horde like the yawning maw of a giant, hungry whale. When it closed around them, it began to shrink, tightening smaller and smaller until it winked out.
Mage magic. It had to be. No ordinary crafter had the power to enclose a hundred Baelmen and then squeeze them out of existence, not even Damien.
Another white spark lit in the sky, scooping more of the creatures. But this time, they knew what was coming and they scattered, rendering the spiral formation into a chaos of winged bodies.
The mages were focused on making broad grabs of the creatures, but dozens of strays were escaping their dragnets.
“The stragglers!” I shouted. “We need to focus on those!”
Panic swelled in my chest as I watched Baelmen begin to descend overhead. I had to do something. Rogan’s demons weren’t making a dent. Ground forces were starting to shoot at the individual creatures, but it was like throwing darts at a swarm of flies. I started to move my focus inward to reach for the maroon underworld magic when light caught my eye, and I glanced down to see that the sigils on my arms were glowing so intensely they shone through my clothes.
My arms throbbed, and again I flashed over to the in-between.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered Roxanne telling me that the strange sigils on my arms had the feel of ley lines—rivers of magical energy that ran through the earth. In the in-between, I pulled at the pool of blood-red magic in the center of my chest and on instinct sent it into the glowing tattoos. The markings hovered in the air above my skeletal arms. Their light became blinding, and power surged through me. But there was something new, a sort of rhythmic ebb and flow that vibrated beneath my feet.
I sent my awareness downward, searching for the source of the pulse.
Deep below, there was a channel of power. I took in the vastness of it and lost my breath. Or maybe in the in-between I needed no air.
Understanding filled me: the in-between had its own ley lines. The sigils on my arms were the passwords to access the power.
My hands joined in front of me, and I read the sigils from left to right in a voice that sounded like nails scratching concrete. I didn’t know what the words meant, but when I reached the last sigil, I reached my awareness out to the river of power. It rushed at me, into me, filling me.
It was like an electric tornado had burst to life in my blood vessels. My entire being pressurized with the onslaught. It was too much. If I couldn’t squeeze the flow down, I’d explode.
I struggled, pushing against the rush of power. The pressure was building, and my every cell seemed strained to the edge of bursting.
I couldn’t contain it, and I couldn’t stop the tidal wave of power crashing into me. The screeches of Baelmen brought me back to the battle waging overhead in the dimension of the living. I was blinded by the rush of power, the pressure obliterating my earthly senses, but I could feel them. Remembering how I’d let magic flow through me in the circle of the coven, I stopped struggling. I let go, hollowing myself and letting the magic burst from my hands.
I didn’t remember raising my arms, but I looked upward into the sky above Lynnette’s yard. Silver glinting magic streamed from each of my palms as if a dam had burst inside me. It was way too much power for someone with my aptitude, and yet somehow I wielded it.
It consumed every Baelman who dared to plunge from the sky, reducing them to ash that floated down like snow. The mages were still at work, casting their magic high above. And below, I obliterated the creatures that slipped through.
It seemed to go on for an eternity, the power rushing through me from the in-between to the world of the living. I was the bridge, the connection between the dead and the living, funneling magic that didn’t belong to this realm.
Silver power surged through me until the last stray Baelman was gone.
I lowered my arms, but the magic still pounded into me. I pushed back, but my efforts were fruitless. I tried to release my grasp as I would have with earth or fire magic. But it just kept coming.
It was going to scrape me raw like a hundred razors, burn me up like a white-hot flame. I’d be nothing but ash, like the Baelmen I’d just destroyed.
Buzzing filled my ears. The sound surged, seeming to vibrate my brain. I fell to the ground and curled up, trying to shut it out. I knew I was screaming, but the sound in my head drowned out my own voice.
Shadows began to crowd in. I stared at the morning sky, unable to move, watching as darkness pushed in from the edges, shrinking the sky to a tiny point.
I lost my grasp on the world.
Chapter 28
WHEN AWARENESS RETURNED, it felt foreign.
I stared up at a ceiling I recognized, my eyes tracing a crack that made gentle bends like a stream on a map.
I knew where I was, yet nothing felt the same
as before.
Before . . .
Now I remembered. The Baelmen. The power of the in-between surging from there, through me, to here.
The bed beneath me shifted. A furry face came into view. Loki. I reached up to pat his flank. Hellfire pulsed deep in his irises, like windows into another dimension.
He whimpered and then licked my cheek.
I pushed up to my elbows, still trying to pinpoint what felt different. There was a very distinct before and after demarcated in my mind, yet I couldn’t say what it was.
There were candles on my dresser. Small spell candles, four of them lit. The ashy, musty smell of spent incense hung in the room.
Loki’s attention shifted to the doorway, and I turned to look, too.
“Ella.” My name fell from Deb’s throat as a half-sob as she came to my side.
I started to sit up. Something tugged at my arm, and there was a sharp pinch in my inner elbow. For the first time, I noticed there was an I.V. pole next to my bed, its line leading to my arm. Deb pressed my shoulder, gently forcing me to lie back.
“Don’t try to get up,” she said. She wiped a tear from under her eye and gave a little laugh. “Thank god you’re awake. Another hour, and they were going to insist on a catheter.”
I frowned, still trying to discern why I felt a strange emptiness in my head.
“I don’t feel right.” My words were a barely intelligible series of croaks. And then a bolt of realization and alarm burst through me. “My magic. I can’t reach it. I can’t even feel it.”
My hand shot out and clutched at the hem of her shirt as my entire world reeled. For one crazy moment I thought maybe I’d destroyed the world’s magic by pulling the power of the in-between.
“It’s a charm,” Deb said, gently trying to loosen my fist from her t-shirt. “We didn’t know what else to do.”
Johnny came through the doorway and quickly moved around the bed to my other side. He was saying something in a soothing voice and tried to take my hand, but I wouldn’t let him.