by DAVID B. COE
“Don’t hurt him!” I called, knowing I was too late.
“We don’t have our weapons!” Luis hollered back at me.
Jacinto rounded on him. “He’s being controlled. Just like Hacker. Protect yourself, but don’t do anything more to the were.”
“What about them?” Luis asked, waving a hand in the direction of Hain and the rest.
Jacinto glowered at Saorla once more, murder in his eyes. “Them you can kill.”
I shouted a warning again, but not in time. I was too far away to feel the magic, but I saw Patty, Hain, Witcombe and their friends stagger and then watched as Amaya and his men were hit by the rebounding magic of their own conjurings. I didn’t know who had cast or what kind of spell he had attempted. But I had assumed that the dark sorcerers would all be warded in every way imaginable, including reflection spells. Fortunately, Amaya had followed my advice: His men were warded, too. He had even used protective magic on the men who weren’t weremystes, though a couple of them were knocked to the ground by the force of the reflected attack.
We had roughly equal numbers of runecrafters on each side, some more skilled than others, of course. But we were evenly matched. Except for Saorla.
“We are stalemated,” she said, a challenge in her eyes. “Is that not how it seems to you?”
It bothered me that she could give voice to what I had been thinking moments before. Was she reading my thoughts?
“Yes,” I said. “So perhaps you and your friends should go.”
“I do not think so.” She half-turned and gave an almost imperceptible nod.
Patty stepped and spun, not toward me or Amaya and his companions, but toward one of the men standing near her. I recognized the motion, having seen it at Witcombe’s place the night before, and I saw the blade in her hand colored with that rich golden sunlight. But I didn’t have time to cry out a warning or cast a spell. I don’t even know what sort of crafting might have stopped her. There was nothing anyone could have done.
Her knife struck true and the man next to her went down, blood fountaining from the side of his neck.
My dad sucked in air through his teeth. “Good God.”
“Cast!” Patty shouted.
Light burst from the dying man’s body, from the blood on his neck and shoulders, chest and back. It was striated, gold from Hain was layered along with blue and green and red. I couldn’t help but think that there was something beautiful about it, even as those rainbows of magic leaped from the body in curving bolts that crackled and hissed like lightning.
Two of them arced toward my father and me; four more surged toward Amaya, Paco, Luis, and Rolon. They struck our chests, smashing into us with the force of freight trains, battering us to the ground.
I felt like I’d grabbed hold of a live wire and then been run over by the power truck that came to fix it. My father groaned.
“Dad?”
“I’m all right,” he said, sounding anything but.
In retrospect, I recognized the craftings. They had tried to control our magic, to bring on the phasing a few minutes early. That was why they had aimed the spell only at the weremystes, not bothering with Amaya’s other guards.
I forced myself to my feet. “All right, Amaya?”
Jacinto was still on the ground, though he was sitting up and rubbing his neck. He raised a hand in answer to my question.
“That didn’t work,” I said to Patty. “I guess we’ll all be going through the phasing together.”
She shook her head. “We won’t be going through them at all. As I told you the other day, dark magic has its advantages.”
“So you killed that man for nothing.”
“No. If it had worked, it would have saved us time, effort. And we want to see if we can control weremystes the way we do the weres. If not for your wardings, I think we would have succeeded.”
“You’re insane.”
“Enough,” Saorla said. “You heard her. The moon time is about to begin, and when it does, you, your father, and these others will be at the mercy of my weremystes, whom I protect from the moon. Or I can kill you all before the moon even rises.”
“So in your mind you’ve won already,” I said. “What’s stopping you from doing as you please?”
“A third choice. Surrender yourselves. Remove your wardings and submit yourselves to my power. You will live, you will be spared the phasing, as you call it, and you will serve the side that is destined to prevail in this coming war.”
“I’m not about to surrender to you. And I refuse to accept that my only choices are between death and betrayal of everything I believe in.”
“Then you’re a fool,” she said, snarling the words.
“You’re not the first to say so.”
I visualized the spell as I spoke, and released it before Saorla could answer. I didn’t know if it would work, and I didn’t have time enough to recite the elements. I just cast, as Namid had taught me. After what Rolon and I did to her in Bear’s house, I knew she would have warded herself against bullets. So I conjured a blade: my hand, her heart, and sharpest steel.
Saorla gasped, her eyes going wide. Blood stained the front of her dress, and she shrieked her pain and rage.
I knew I’d hurt her, and that was something. But I’d wanted to kill her, and, it seemed, I didn’t have the power to do so. An instant later I was in agony. Somehow I was on the ground again, magical spikes piercing my head, my chest, my hands.
I should kill you now, her voice whispered in my mind. You have earned a slow, agonizing death, and you shall have it. But I will have your blood and that of your father. And you will watch him die before I take your miserable life.
The anguish ended as suddenly as it had begun, leaving me gulping for air.
“Get up!” she said, speaking aloud this time.
I didn’t move.
“Get up right now or Leander Fearsson dies.”
My father helped me to my feet, his eyes locked on mine.
“Any ideas?” I mouthed.
He shook his head. “I’m already feeling the moon. I’ve got nothing. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not doing much better.” I cast a look Amaya’s way only to find that he was watching me. I read my own despair in his dark eyes.
We could use your help here, Namid, I said in my mind.
Saorla clapped her hands and laughed. The blood, I noticed, had vanished from her dress. For all her power, she had used her own blood to heal herself. Or to torture me. Whichever it was, I knew this was significant in some way, though I had no idea how or why.
“You have learned nothing, Justis Fearsson,” she said. “I do not believe he will be coming. I have told you before, the runemystes are more concerned with their own safety and their precious rules than they are with the lives of those who serve them. I warned you of this when first we met.”
“I remember. I refused to believe you then, and I still do.”
“And again I tell you that you are a fool.” She opened her arms wide. “Where is he? Where is your precious Namid’skemu? You have asked him to help you. You did so just now, and I have no doubt you have done so several times before. But where is he?”
“Here.”
She and I turned as one. Namid stood on a low rise to the west of the trailer, sunlight shining through him as if he were made of glass. Two figures flanked him. One, a woman, had an odd, mottled appearance. It took a moment to realize that she was made of stone, granite perhaps. She was beautiful and yet as severe and remote as a mountain top. On Namid’s other side stood a slight man who appeared to waver and dance, even as he remained still. He was even less substantial than Namid in his clearest form. But somehow I knew that this was illusion. In his own way he must have been every bit as powerful as my runemyste.
“You are well, Ohanko?”
“Feeling better now.”
“You cannot interfere!” Saorla said. “I know you cannot! You were punished for what you did to Cahors.”
Namid’s waters riffled, making the sunlight passing through him waver. “I was, because I did not have the permission of my kind to act. This time I do. At Ohanko’s urging, I have convinced the other runemystes that you are a threat to us, and to the world we are sworn to protect.” He indicated the two mystes standing with him. “They have sent the three of us to keep you from taking additional lives.”
“I do not believe you!”
“Believe what you will. We shall not interfere with them,” the runemyste said with a small gesture that somehow encompassed every human on my father’s land. “But you shall not help your friends, nor will you harm mine.”
She spun toward me both hands held before her. Flames leaped from her fingers. I threw my arms up in a vain attempt to protect myself. I needn’t have bothered. The fire never reached me; it never even came close. Nor was it the shield I had conjured to protect my father and me from the coyote that stopped her spell. The flames simply vanished, swallowed, it seemed, by the air before me.
Saorla screeched her frustration.
Patty whispered something to Witcombe, and an instant later one of Amaya’s guards was thrown into the air. He somersaulted toward the dark sorcerers and landed on his back at Patty’s feet. She stabbed down with the knife, but the man managed to roll out away from the blow.
I pulled the Glock from my jacket pocket and fired off a shot. I aimed for her blade hand, but missed. She gaped at me—maybe she hadn’t considered that I might still have my weapon even after Saorla had disarmed Amaya’s men. And that moment’s hesitation gave Amaya’s man time enough to find his feet. He braced himself to throw a punch, but another spell fell upon him. His head snapped to the side, and he collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut. I had a feeling he was dead before he hit the ground.
Hain grinned.
I fired again, this time at Hain’s head. But in the span of a few seconds between my first shot and my second the weremancers had warded themselves against gunfire. The shot ricocheted back at me, missing my dad and me by inches and gauging a hole in the side of the trailer.
That shot was like the report of a starter’s gun. Abruptly spells were flying in all directions. Luis went down, as did Witcombe and Patty. But in moments all of them were up again, casting as fast they could, trying to find a spell that would overcome their opponents’ wardings. Hain threw spell after spell at my father and me, each one landing like a fist. Our wardings held, but the force of his attacks was enough to leave me dazed; I couldn’t image how my father stayed on his feet.
“Are you—?”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said through clenched teeth. “Just get the bastard.”
Sometimes I thought that weremystes of all sorts were too enamored of fancy spells. Namid had taught me to think in simpler terms. I aimed two spells in quick succession at Hain. With the first I pulled his foot out from under him as I had done to Patty at Witcombe’s house. And as soon as he hit the ground, I cast again.
Hain, the ground beneath him, and a large chasm in the desert dirt.
The crack opened and he let out a cry of surprise and alarm. He teetered on the edge trying to swing himself free, and then toppled into it.
The crack, Hain, and the dirt covering him once more. The spell hummed in the air and I heard another cry, more desperate this time. His arm flailed above ground; I didn’t know how much air he had down there, but for the moment at least I had other concerns.
“That was well done,” Dad said.
“Thank—”
He shoved me aside and cast at the same time. At least I thought the magic came from him. It played along my skin like a summer wind and met the oncoming spell with enough force to shake the ground beneath my feet. The great coyote that had continued to growl and bare its teeth at us all this time flattened its ears and let out a soft whine.
I stared at him. “What the hell.”
“I saw her cast,” Dad said, pointing at Patty. “I don’t know what it was, but she aimed it at you. I met it with a warding of my own, a wall spell, I used to call it.”
“Seemed to work.”
The ground opened again near Patty and Witcombe, and Hain scrabbled out like an insect, his clothes covered with dirt. He nodded once to Patty and they pivoted in unison toward my father and me.
“Ward yourself!” I said.
But they had learned. I felt the spell course in our direction and then pass over us. Stone shattered behind me.
“What was—”
“Crap!” my father said. “Move!” He shoved me again, this time following right on my heels.
I heard a deep metallic groan. Another spell skimmed over us, and more stone broke. Not stone, cinder block. The supports holding up the trailer.
The groan crescendoed, tipped over into a grating shriek. From within the trailer came a frenzy of shattering glass: windows, plates, glasses, picture frames. If it was fragile and my father owned it, it was smashed in those few seconds. And then the trailer fell over, crashing to the ground where my father and I had been standing seconds before.
I conjured fragments of broken cinder block into the air and hurled them at Patty, Hain, and Witcombe, hoping that their warding had been specific to bullets. Surely they hadn’t anticipated that I might throw rock at them.
I think my dad must thought the same thing, because chunks of cinder block rained down on them, opening wounds on their faces and necks, battering them to the ground.
Saorla growled again, her body going rigid as she strained against the magical constraints placed upon her by Namid and his companions. For good measure, I hit her with a piece of cinder block, too.
We threw another volley of stone at the weremancers, but by now they had warded themselves. The fragments fell to the ground in front of them; a few hurtled back our way, but missed us.
My eyes flicked westward. The sun hung just above the horizon, fiery orange and enormous. Looking to the east, I saw the first glimmer of moon glow touching the sky. We had no more than a few minutes before the phasing began. If what Patty said was true, while our minds were at the mercy of the moon, hers and those of her dark sorcerer friends would remain clear. And all would be lost.
You have little time, Ohanko, I heard in my mind.
Did he really think I needed to be told?
Hain and Witcombe had aimed their spells at Jacinto, Rolon, and the others, pounding them with attack after attack. Amaya’s wardings held, but they were falling back step by step. Hain and Witcombe had only to keep them occupied for a while longer.
An idea came to me, and though I didn’t like it, I didn’t feel that I had much choice. I’d cast with a small bit of blood in the hospital parking lot and had used the fact that I was fighting a necromancer as my excuse. I needed more now, and I didn’t even bother trying to justify the spell I intended to craft. I tore the bandage from my arm, grabbed a shard of window pane from the ground and carved a gash in my arm alongside the scar from the other night. Blood welled, ran over my skin.
The expression on my father’s face nearly stopped me: disapproval, fright, even disgust. “Justis, what are you doing?” But I saw no other way to stop them.
Seven elements: the glow of the moon brightening the eastern horizon, the shape and color of it as it would appear in mere seconds, the land beneath my feet, my mind, my magic, a shield against the phasing, and my blood.
Magic prickled painfully on my arms and neck and down my spine. The blood on my arm was wiped away, and a weight I hadn’t known was there lifted from my mind, like haze blown away by a clean desert wind. Everything was clearer: my vision, my thoughts, my emotions.
“Very good, Jay,” Patty called to me. “You see it now, don’t you? The power of blood magic. It’s like nothing you’ve experienced before, right?”
“You think I’m one of you now.” I shook my head. “You’re wrong. When have you ever used your own blood for a spell? When have you accepted that the power you want demands a cost that you have t
o pay on your own, without taking it from others?”
More blood seeped from the cut on my arm.
My fist, her face, my blood.
The spell smashed through whatever wardings she had conjured. She staggered back, falling onto her rear. I had aimed the blow with care; didn’t want her using a bloodied nose to strengthen spells of her own.
I saw Paco, Rolon, and Luis cut themselves and cast. Hain and Witcombe went down. Jacinto didn’t draw blood. I couldn’t read his expression, but I guessed that he felt as my dad did about what I had done. That was all right with me.
Patty clambered to her feet again. There was something in her hand, and I wondered for the span of a heartbeat if it was a pistol. Only when she mashed it down on the head of the man next to her did I understand that it was a rock. The man fell to the ground, and she followed him down, her blade flashing with the last rays of the sun.
She laid the knife blade along his throat.
“I’ll kill him,” she said. “You think your own blood is more powerful than someone else’s. Maybe it is. But do you know how much blood I can take from one man? And do you know what I can do with it when my magic is enhanced by the pull of the moon?”
CHAPTER 24
“How many people are you going to kill, Patty?”
“As many as I have to! You think you’ve found some secret formula, don’t you? But your spell won’t last long. You think you’re the first weremyste to use blood against the phasing? You’re not. The spell Saorla put on us is more powerful by far than what you’ve done. You’ve bought yourself a few minutes, that’s all.”
I wanted to argue with her, but already I could feel the weight of the moon pressing down on me once more. She was right. I’d won a moment’s reprieve. The moon wasn’t even up yet and my spell was failing. I suppose a runecrafter could keep the moon at bay all night long, if he was willing to bleed himself to death.
“I can cast again,” I said. “I can keep myself sane long enough to destroy you.”
She shook her head. “You can’t. I’ll bleed this one, and then bleed your friends. I’ll bleed my friends if I have to. Saorla and I have plans. Nothing else matters.” Her gaze flicked in Jacinto’s direction.