Stone Cold Magic (Ella Grey Series Book 1)

by Jayne Faith

  A hard-faced woman with a tight gray-streaked bun waited for us with her hands clasped in front of her. She wore a white lab coat and an ID badge on a lanyard around her neck identifying her as Dr. Bonnie Smith. Jacob stood a bit behind her. He was flanked by two men in suits who had to be lawyers.

  Jacob’s eyes were so hard as they fell on me I could almost feel his gaze drilling against my skin. The clenching and releasing of his jaw muscles were the only outward signs of his agitation.

  Mishti pulled some paperwork from one of her folders.

  “We require access to all health information for this specimen. In addition, we require access to the specimen itself,” she said. She handed the papers to Dr. Smith, who only gave them a cursory shuffle and glance before passing them to Jacob. Dr. Smith waited for him to scan through them, and then when he nodded at her, she turned to an oversized tablet mounted on the wall. With the touch of her index finger, she activated the tablet.

  “Here you’ll see the live readouts for vital signs and supernatural activity.”

  Mishti stepped up to the tablet, adjusting her glasses, and examined it. She pulled a notebook from under her folders and produced a pen from a pocket, and began writing.

  Lynnette sidled closer to me and leaned in so she could whisper. “They’re trying to shield it in that room, but I can feel the Rip spawn even out here. Large arch-demon. I hope you’re quick with your trap. When I exorcise it from the boy, it’s going to be looking for another victim, and it’s going to be angry.” Her deep blue eyes, emphasized by her pale skin and dark hair, took on an intensity that reminded me of Raf.

  My heart lurched, but I raised my chin and gave her a steady look. “You do your job, and I’ll do mine.”

  She grinned like a cat about to pounce on a mouse, and I realized she was actually enjoying this.

  “Ever performed a separation on a gargoyle before?” I asked.

  “No, but it shouldn’t be a problem. Species separation is all about the same when you boil it down.”

  “Gotcha.” Actually, I didn’t really know exactly what she meant, but as long as she had the exorcism part of our mission under control, that was all I cared about. “Any sense about how Nathan’s doing in there?”

  “Alive, that’s about all I can tell.” She peered at me with her intense, kohl-lined eyes. “Have you ever considered joining a coven?”

  I pulled my head back in surprise. “Me? Seriously?” I almost forgot to whisper.

  She opened her mouth to respond, but Mishti seemed to have gotten all she needed form the panel readouts.

  “Please let us in to inspect the specimen,” she said to Dr. Smith.

  The lady in the lab coat went to another panel next to the doorframe and palmed it. It flashed green and the door mechanism made a metallic thwacking noise.

  “By international agreement, you have up to thirty minutes to perform your inspection.” She reached for the door handle and gave us a slight smirk. “I’m assuming that you won’t be taking the additional thirty minutes allowed for interviewing the human subject, seeing as how that would be impossible in his current state.”

  She opened the door and Mishti went in. For a split second, my urge to grab the doctor’s bun and try to twist it off her head was almost uncontrollable. The sudden frantic movement of the shadows in my periphery helped distract me from any tempting violence. I clamped my teeth and drew in a breath through flared nostrils, forcing my focus to the task at hand. Lynnette, Johnny, Damien, and I followed Mishti, and the door closed behind us.

  I grabbed Damien’s arm and pulled him close. “Lynnette’s going to do an exorcism,” I whispered rapidly. “Sorry to spring this on you, but we need your magic.”

  I didn’t have a chance to say more as Lynnette’s magic flared through the air, rushing around me like a sudden gale. The smoky shapes framing my vision were stirring in response, flapping like windsocks in a storm.

  “Door’s locked and warded. They won’t get in until I release the ward. I’m going to begin the separation in a few seconds,” Lynnette said to me in a low voice. “Get her to back up.” She flicked a glance ahead at Mishti.

  Lynnette gave me one final look, and I nodded once, trying not to get distracted by the shadows and the pulse of the other in my forehead. Lynnette closed her eyes, focusing within.

  Mishti hadn’t noticed that Lynnette had stopped, and of course hadn’t felt the magic Lynnette had used to ward the door. The small Indian woman had continued on to the gargoyle and was looking it up and down. The room seemed to fill with a million buzzing hot points of magic that bounced off my skin like gnats. I couldn’t see them, but the air felt alive with energy.

  “Ella?” Johnny took a couple of steps toward me, his brows drawn in confusion.

  Damien intercepted him and spoke to him in a low voice.

  I went up to the GSHO inspector and grasped her arm gently but firmly. “I’m sorry, Ms. Gupta, but I need you to get away from the gargoyle.”

  She turned to me, her mouth half-open in surprise, and then her gaze went past me to Lynnette, who was swaying slightly, already deep in trance.

  “What . . .” Mishti’s eyes whipped up to mine. “What exactly is going on? What is she doing?”

  “There’s been a little change in our plans,” I said, more forcibly tugging her away from the statue. “For your own safety, you need to get out of the way.”

  She planted her feet, refusing.

  Movement caught my eye, and I looked past Mishti at the gargoyle, which seemed to shift as if surrounded by the heat shimmer of a hot flame. I caught a glimpse of demon eyes within the gargoyle’s face, and my heart jumped into my throat. I bent at the knees and picked up Mishti, grunting as I slung her over my shoulder.

  She protested more loudly as I carried her to the corner of the room, set her on her feet, and simultaneously whipped the demon can off my belt and whirled around. I mentally reached downward for earth magic.

  “Stay back!” I yelled at the inspector.

  Damn, I wished I had my whip.

  I watched in fascinated horror as the gargoyle animated, a living, breathing stone creature. It was surrounded in writhing strands of multicolored magic and glowed as if it were on fire. It thrashed, spreading its wings, and then arched and screamed, and the sound was like a cat’s screech combined with claws across a chalkboard. Cracks illuminated along its surface and angry red hellfire shone through. I wasn’t sure how Nathan could be surviving this, but Lynnette had seemed confident she could separate Nathan from the two creatures without killing him.

  Blue smoke began to seep from the glowing cracks in the gargoyle. The smoke was thick, almost opaque.

  “Johnny?” I glanced behind me. He already had his tablet powered up. “You’ll have to be our eyes if the smoke gets bad.”

  Damien had moved next to me, and my skin prickled as he pulled magic. “The demon will go for the most vulnerable of us,” I said, talking fast. “Lynnette will be spent after the exorcism, and Nathan will be defenseless.”

  “They’ll be too far apart,” he said through gritted teeth. “I can’t make a ward that encloses both of them.”

  “Focus on Lynnette, Mishti, and Johnny, then,” I said. “I’ll take care of Nathan.”

  If past experience held, the demon wouldn’t try to possess me. I hoped that meant I’d be able to protect Nathan until the arch-demon was contained in the trap I’d brought.

  Lynnette had managed to wake up both the gargoyle and the demon, but I couldn’t see any sign of Nathan yet. As far as I could tell, all three species were still merged and at least two of them were pissed. Mishti was yelling behind me, but I was trying to ignore her and focus on keeping hold of what little magic I had to wield.

  My pulse pounded in my head as adrenaline and earth magic bled into every cell. I glanced back at Lynnette, and I licked my dry lips. Her eyes had turned solid black. With a hard swallow, I moved a couple of steps ahead of Damien.

  A low boom shoo
k the floor, accompanied by a blinding flash, and I threw up an arm to shield my face. When I opened my eyes, a plume of heavy smoke completely obscured the gargoyle, and the smell of sulfur and burnt hair filled the air in an eye-watering stench. I happened to glance up over the smoke and caught sight of a face in one of the theater windows. At first I assumed it was Jacob, but it wasn’t. It was Phillip Zarella. The look on the necromancer’s face was a disturbing mix of insanity and glee, and his attention wasn’t on the gargoyle. It was on me. A chill spiraled up my spine, but I didn’t have time to consider what the maniac might be thinking.

  “The gargoyle’s free,” Johnny called from behind me. “Nathan is still possessed.”

  Coughing, I held my sleeve over my mouth and nose. The smoke lifted a little to reveal two beings where a moment ago there’d been only the gargoyle.

  The stone creature had stopped writhing. It shook its head in a feline movement, blinked its huge eyes, and then began licking a stony-skinned paw with its pale pink tongue. It seemed completely unconcerned about the demon-possessed human standing next to it.

  I recognized Nathan by his pale blond hair that was the exact same color as Roxanne’s. But his skin was dead gray, and his eyes burned red like two windows into hell. His clothing had survived the ordeal, but it was plastered to his skin, and he looked as if he’d been dusted all over with ashes. His chest was heaving, but other than that he stood stock still.

  Angry red cracks began to peek out across his skin, indicating the separation of demon and human was imminent. At least Mishti had gone quiet. I risked a glance at Lynnette. Her eyes were still black as night, made even more otherworldly by her dark lashes and kohl-lined lids, and her lips moved as if she were silently chanting.

  Damien lifted his arms and multi-element magic snaked from the ends of his fingers, ready but not yet curling around himself, Lynnette, Johnny, and Mishti.

  I pulled the top off the demon can and shoved the lid into my pocket. The temperature in the room had risen several degrees, and sweat dripped down my temples. With my eyes glued on Nathan, I moved forward a few steps and set the can on the floor.

  The hellfire crevices in Nathan’s skin were pulsing, widening. He threw his head back in silent agony as white flame flared around him. I squinted, watching as black vapor crept from the cracks in his skin—the start of the demon’s exit from his body. The brightness intensified, and I squeezed my eyes closed against the sharp pain. Before I could blink through the after images, the demon was already screaming and tearing around the room. The human and the demon were separated. I felt the magical whoosh of Damien’s power as he created a ward around himself, Lynnette, Johnny, and Mishti behind me.

  Nathan had collapsed and appeared unconscious. I needed to protect him before the demon tried to possess him again. Without time to recover, the young man likely wouldn’t survive another exorcism.

  “Nathan!” I yelled, hoping to rouse him. He didn’t move.

  The demon screeched and circled overhead, its wingspan a dozen feet across and stirring up the air.

  I snatched the can up and ran a few steps toward Nathan, waving the trap at the creature to get its attention. With an ear-splitting scream it darted toward me, but then like other demons had, it reared back, unwilling to get too close. It flapped, lifting higher, and then looked over at Nathan.

  “No,” I gritted out. Too many people had worked too hard for this. There was no way I was going out there and telling Roxanne we’d lost her brother.

  I closed my eyes, summoned every shred of magic I was able to pull, and then held my right arm up and imagined I grasped the charmed whip. I let my magic fly out, and a tight green orb hit the demon on the side of its head, momentarily distracting it from Nathan.

  I ran toward him and threw myself over his crumpled form.

  Turning my head, I could see the others. Mishti was wide-eyed and clearly terrified. She’d moved behind Lynnette to the door, alternately pounding on it with her fists and turning to look at the demon. Armed guards were outside beating on the door and jerking the handle, but they couldn’t get through Lynnette’s ward. I had no idea how long her ward would hold. The gargoyle had moved to a corner and reassumed its statue form, probably to protect itself from another possession.

  I still grasped the trap, but the demon wouldn’t come close enough to me to activate it. Damien couldn’t hold his ward forever. I had to do something.

  With my eyes on the demon, I moved off of Nathan and slipped my arm under one of his and across his chest. If I could just get him across the room and inside Damien’s ward, he’d be safe. Heaving backward, I moved him a few feet.

  The center of my forehead pounded so hard it felt like my skull was going to split wide open. It was like the other was trying to claw its way out. I stumbled, and Nathan fell from my grasp. Spots danced in my eyes, but they weren’t due to the shadows. I was on the verge of passing out. I fell across Nathan’s chest. The sensation grew so intense it overwhelmed everything. I jammed my hands against my temples, groaning through clenched teeth.

  Behind my closed eyelids, random scenes flashed across the screen of my mind. Some of them were in the yellow-and-blue tint of my necro vision. And then the image settled and the pain subsided to an uncomfortable thump.

  I opened my eyes, but the vision remained. Gasping, I scrambled backward on all fours. I was somewhere else . . . no, I was seeing from the viewpoint of somewhere else.

  From above. Where Phillip Zarella stood.

  Just as the realization slammed home, every muscle in my body went rigid. I fell back, my head smacking the floor. Everything went momentarily black and then cleared. I was staring up at the ceiling, from my own perspective again, but I couldn’t move.

  Then, as before when the other had taken command of me, my limbs began to shift. With my head throbbing at the back from my fall, I stood with wooden movements and turned to face the center of the room.

  And that was when I felt it—his presence in my head.

  Phillip Zarella was driving me.

  I felt the same dark energy I’d sensed when I’d first met him, but this time it was inside my brain. The psychopathic necromancer was controlling me like I was a vampire or a demon. And he wanted to play.

  I could feel his intention as clearly as if it were my own. He wanted the demon to come at me. The thought of it gave him a feeling of pleasure and anticipation that made my stomach roll sickeningly. He knew about the reaper, maybe not exactly how its soul was attached to me, but he’d sensed it when we’d first met, and I could feel how it had captured his imagination. He wanted to dig around inside my mind and soul to examine it. He wanted to see what would happen if its host—me—became possessed.

  He was driving the arch-demon, too. I wasn’t sure how I knew it, but I could sense the creature’s apprehension, its unwillingness to come too close to me despite Zarella’s telepathic order, and I almost felt a fleeting wisp of pity for it. But I had my own problems.

  Zarella forced me forward, stopped me when I got to the dropped demon trap, and drew my foot back. My movements were becoming more natural, as if he were getting the hang of manipulating me, and the realization brought bile up my throat. If I managed to survive this, I was positive I’d never feel completely clean again. He drew my foot back and sent it flying forward. The toe of my boot hit the can and sent it tumbling to the far side of the room.

  The demon was darting nervously but hadn’t tried to dive in for possession. Clearly Zarella didn’t quite have full control of it because its fear of me was still winning. At least it wasn’t going for Nathan.

  My breath became ragged as I mentally probed around Zarella’s presence in my mind. There had to be a way to push him out, to reclaim myself. Loki had knocked loose the reaper’s control the night I was under the influence of the sleeping beauty spell, but I had no idea how he’d done it.

  But if a hellhound could help me, maybe now the angel of death could, too.

  I shifted my focus
to the shadows swirling furiously in my periphery. Cold sweat popped out on my forehead, chest, and neck as I tried to invite them in, to welcome them. I had no idea if embracing the reaper’s soul would allow it to consume mine, but I had no choice. If it ate my soul and I died right here in the Gregori facility, at least I would die knowing I did everything I could to try to save Nathan and my friends.

  My pulse slowed as the smoky shapes crowded in, drifting across my eyes and partially obscuring my vision. I felt the presence of the reaper and pushed past my dread, turning to it instead of cringing from it. I probed around inside myself, looking for where the other was centered, and my attention sank to a point just below my breastbone. And then I pulled my own will aside, making room for the reaper.

  The deep cold I’d felt during my session with Jennifer, when I’d seen the face of the angel of death in the glass, bloomed in my core as if I’d swallowed a chunk of dry ice. Through the reaper, I felt the jagged darkness of chaos the arch-demon emanated. And I sensed the black fascination—no, more like kinship—with death within Phillip Zarella. I turned my attention to the other and tried to convey that I needed help pushing Zarella out of my mind, that together the reaper and I had to overpower him.

  I could sense Zarella’s confusion, but his hold on me wasn’t changing, wasn’t weakening. Through our telepathic connection, I realized Zarella knew what I was doing—and it excited him.

  Shit. A fresh wave of dread flooded through me as Zarella’s grasp on my mind seemed to tighten. I’d miscalculated. Instead of the reaper and me standing against Zarella, letting the reaper emerge within me had only made it easier for Zarella to control me—us.

  If Zarella got his wish and the demon possessed me, I’d go after one of the humans in the room. I’d kill, and then there would be no saving me, exorcism would no longer be possible. The demon and I would be permanently fused, and I’d be euthanized.

  Or maybe the angel of death would devour my soul first. I decided I preferred that to subjecting myself to Zarella’s sick entertainment.