by Anna Abner
It took David a few moments to breathe through the dizziness and remember why Dani had zapped him in the first place. A tense phone call. Fear in her eyes. And she wouldn’t tell him who’d scared her.
He grabbed his wallet and jogged outside as the ambulance pulled away.
The Carver stood across the street.
Dread solidified as David’s options for ending this on his terms dwindled to almost none. He stepped off the sidewalk.
“I asked you to do one little thing,” the Carver complained, his eyes cold like shards of glass. “I don’t understand why you have to make things so difficult.”
That was easy. “Because you abducted Dani and me, you cast magic on us, you tortured us, and you threatened my son.”
“Are you saying if I had asked nicely we wouldn’t be standing here right now?”
“No.” He’d never agree to possess a person with a demon. “We’d still be here.”
“Such hostility,” the Carver taunted. Basement cell or no basement cell, he was still a ghoulish creep. “Don’t you love your son?”
“You don’t have Ryan.” Dani had protected the boy before she’d taken off. He knew that for sure.
The Carver straightened his suit—a charcoal-gray one that stretched its seams around his belly paunch—and then fiddled with his black silk tie. “Not yet.”
“Don’t.”
“Perhaps you’ll change your mind once I start cutting him open.”
David wanted to be noble like Dani and face these bastards down, unarmed if necessary, and go out fighting with his last ounce of strength. But David had a very big Achilles heel. He’d do anything, anything, to protect his son.
“I’ll do whatever you ask, just don’t hurt him.”
“Excellent.” The Carver rocked forward onto the balls of his feet. “I knew I’d find your motivation if I just kept trying. I’ll drive. It looks like your vehicle is missing.”
* * *
Dani could fix this. She could fix all this. And in no time at all. Twenty minutes. Thirty, tops. Now that she had her power back, she’d walk in, collect Derek, and ferry him safely away. Then she’d get creative on how to hurt Jeff and the Carver.
Derek first. Revenge after.
She left Ryan at his grandma’s and then headed straight to the address the Carver had given her. It was a former church, now a bare, red-shingled building surrounded by leafless trees and yellowed patches of grass.
She crunched across dead and dried up ants and grasshoppers. Under the front step lay a dead and mummified frog. Or maybe it was a toad. It was hard to tell. But it was clear the dark magic being practiced on this property was seeping out and affecting every living thing around it, from the insects and amphibians to the birds and plants, too.
Quickly, Dani cast a personal protection spell and a shield of snow flurries whirled around her body. A tall cylinder of impenetrable magic kept her safe from full frontal assault.
She ran through the unlocked front door, across a foyer, and into what used to be the chapel. The stained glass windows were still there but the pews were all gone. So was the altar. Just yards and yards of ancient red carpeting remained in the cavernous room.
A disheveled blond man in track pants and a black hoodie crouched on the floor like a present just waiting to be snatched. Derek Walker didn’t look like an evil mastermind. He looked scared shitless. Yeah, he’d done some questionable things, but he didn’t deserve a life of never-ending tortures.
She yanked Derek to his feet and widened her shield to include them both.
The place was deserted, and there was no way it could be this easy.
“Please don’t,” he cried. There were bruises on his face. Ugly, swollen marks that turned her stomach.
“I’m not one of them,” Dani greeted. “We’re getting out of here.”
“I don’t remember anything,” he said, not making a whole lot of sense. He clung to Dani’s arm, his fingers like bird talons.
“Just stay close.”
Dani made it as far as the foyer. Jeff the necromancer blocked the main entrance, a fresh spell circle at his feet.
“Derek doesn’t have anything to do with you and me,” Dani said, not sounding nearly as brave as she’d hoped. “I’m taking him home, and then you and I can make a deal, okay?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
She tried not to be insulted the Dark Caster thought her such a lightweight he’d only sent one goon to capture her. And a second string goon at that.
“I wasn’t asking.”
Jeff couldn’t touch her physically or cast on her so long as her protection spell held, so she didn’t give a crap what he thought.
Dani dragged Derek to the right and a side door. But the magic required to keep up her shield spell was draining her body of its heat. Her fingers were blue under her nails. She guessed her lips were, too. Frosty white air puffed from her mouth, and she stumbled a step.
Jeff said something in Latin. The door jiggled, and then a lock clicked. Dani could use magic to open it, but she’d have to drop her shield spell leaving her and Derek vulnerable to attack.
She spun around to find Jeff between her and the only other exit.
She glared with what she hoped was terrifying menace. “Touch me and I’ll freeze you solid.”
He snickered. “I don’t need to touch you. All I need to do is stall you.”
Dani’s shield sputtered. She was moments from reaching her limit. If she didn’t stop casting, she’d siphon the last bit of warmth from her body and freeze like a Popsicle. With a groan of frustration, she broke the spell.
The shield dissolved, and snow flurries fluttered to the red carpet and melted into slush.
Jeff said, “Dormeo,” and Dani was sucked violently into the dark where she couldn’t move, couldn’t hear, could hardly even breathe.
Chapter Nineteen
David climbed into the Carver’s very ordinary Audi sedan and snapped on his seatbelt.
“Do not put me to sleep,” he warned. “I don’t like that shit.”
“No, no, of course not.” With the closest thing to a friendly smile David had seen him use, the Carver turned on the radio to an R&B station, adjusted the seat warmers to their lowest level, and popped on a pair of expensive sunglasses.
Surreal was a good word for this experience. Dark necromancers drove luxury cars, liked music, and preferred their rear ends toasty just like normal people? If asked to describe the Carver’s car, he would have gone for something creepy like a van with no windows. Not a late model luxury sedan. To afford this car he must have a job. Where would a demon-summoning caster work? David couldn’t even imagine.
“You’re the one who called Dani earlier, aren’t you?” David asked.
“Guilty as charged.” He turned onto Western Boulevard.
“Did you hurt her?”
The Carver sighed. “I don’t want to hurt either of you. If you remember, I came to you as a friend with a very attractive proposition. Which still stands, by the way.”
“What you call attractive, I call cruel and illegal,” David said.
The Carver didn’t respond but turned left onto Commerce and then pulled into the driveway of an abandoned church.
David did his best to stay calm and think rationally. He still had his cell phone and his wits. But he wouldn’t call for police backup until he knew Dani was safe. If he made a miscalculation, acted too soon, and these freaks punished her for it—or took her away where he couldn’t find her—he’d never forgive himself.
They entered the building, which was eerily quiet and stripped of interior furnishings, and then stepped into what was once the chapel. Lit candles clustered near the wide double doors, throwing shadows and clogging the air with scented smoke. David spotted the man from the photograph—Derek—curled onto his side against the far wall.
Tony appeared. “Oh, shit. This is bad.”
“Stay close,” David whispered. “I’m going to need your
help.”
Three spell circles, complete with various spell marks—David recognized a bridge and what looked like devil horns—had been drawn in a pyramid formation on the carpet with white spray paint. Jeff stood in the bottom right position and greeted David with a sneer and a wink.
And then he found Dani lying near the back of the cavernous room. She was positioned in such a way that he knew someone had moved her there and had fun arranging her because she lay straight as an arrow, her arms crossed over her chest and bound with duct tape, and her legs crossed at the ankles. Her hair spread out from her head, giving the illusion she was hanging upside down. Or falling.
The thought that someone had put their hands on her infuriated David, and he tasted bile. “Wake her up,” he snarled over his shoulder. “You’ve gone too far.”
“You are to stand here,” the Carver instructed as if he didn’t notice the wrath in David’s eyes. “We will assist you from behind.”
“You must be out of your fucking mind.” He pulled his cell phone from his back pocket and turned it on.
Jeff said one word in Latin, and David’s screen went black. Frantically, he pressed the On button, but it was good and dead.
“Do you want him to turn her off as well?” the Carver asked calmly. “He has the ability to stop her heart in her chest. How long until she has irreparable brain damage? Five minutes? How long until she’s unrevivable? Do you know CPR Mr. Wilkes?”
David’s skin went cold, and his knees started to quiver. They wouldn’t.
“Now, please take your spot. I want to be done with this by morning.”
Tony popped into sight beside Dani. “We can wake her up. Come on, we woke up the guy in the hospital. We can wake her up, too.”
David shook his head. It was no use. The moment he cast, they’d retaliate, and he didn’t know enough about necromancy to stop the Carver from killing them both.
“Tell your friend,” Jeff said, “to shut the hell up and do his job.”
He glanced from Jeff to Tony. So, everybody could see and hear everybody. In a room full of necromancers, there were no secrets. Now that he concentrated, a man in a suit and tie similar to the Carver’s stood beside him. And an older gentleman hovered near Jeff. There, in the doorway, hunched a little girl with black pigtails, but as soon as he focused on her, she vanished.
Olive. Holden’s spirit companion. Hope wasn’t dead, then, just on life support. If David could stall the spell, Holden would arrive, and he knew more than David did about dark magic.
He stepped into the front and center spell circle and faced Derek as the Carver moved into the remaining circle.
“We’re going to start with a strength-sapping spell until Mr. Walker over there is unconscious. Then we bring forth the demon.” The Carver explained the words to say. “Do what I tell you, and it’ll all be over soon.”
“Why do you need me?” David asked. “You two could handle this on your own. Can’t you?”
“I told you we want you on board.”
What a liar. From everything David had learned about dark casting and heaven and the balance of nature, he knew the Carver was hiding the real truth. “You know someone will be punished for this. At the very least, someone’s spirit companion is getting devoured. And you’re using me as the fall guy. I’ll be stripped of my powers. Tony over there, who never hurt a person in his short life, will be destroyed and you’ll go about your merry way with a demon on a string. Right?”
“Hold up. What’s going on?” Tony exclaimed.
“Leave,” David said to Tony, panic rattling through him. “Go. I can’t cast if you’re not here.”
“I’m not leaving you—”
“Go!”
The Carver picked up the nearest lit candle and chucked it overhand at David. It hit him in the gut, hard, and sprayed hot wax all over him. “Get your head in the game,” he shouted. “Start casting or the witch dies. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
Jeff and the Carver started casting, and Derek writhed on the floor, whimpering like a sick child.
David glanced at the Carver, who shook his head at him in a threatening way. David may have only one chance at this. He turned his back on the Carver, gestured for Tony to assist him, and spoke the Latin plea to heaven Willow had given them.
And he was right. As soon as he said the words and sent the plea for justice into the atmosphere, the Carver cast on him.
A tickle started in the back of David’s throat, and then blood burst from his mouth like a superheated geyser. He choked, coughing spastically. So much blood gushed that it pooled on the floor around his head and spread across the carpet. He got light-headed as his lifeblood poured out of him. His vision fuzzed over.
“I guess you weren’t listening.” The Carver sneered.
The flow of blood slowed to a trickle out of the corner of David’s mouth.
“Do I have your attention now?”
Dani. His only hope. With his last breath, he said, “Expergo,” and prayed he had enough gas in the tank to wake her up on the first try.
* * *
Dani stirred to the scent of brimstone and a human being in complete agony. The poor creature made sounds like a dying animal, like a tortured prisoner. She opened her eyes to discover it was David.
Tears burst just like that. One moment she was waking from a dream and the next she couldn’t stop crying.
Her hands were tied at the wrists, but her magic wasn’t bound. She still had juice. That was the only good news. David lay face down, grinding his bloodied forehead into the chapel’s red carpet, his fingers clawing at the short threads like he might dig his way out through the floor.
“David?” she called. He didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure if he even heard her. And he was too far away to lay hands on.
The Carver heard her, though, because he smiled the most evil heartless smile she’d ever witnessed.
Dani had had enough. She’d found her line in the sand, and this was it. No one would ever cast a hurtful spell on her or someone she loved again. Fury, like a whirlwind, swept through her, and she was consumed. Her vision turned red, as if her blood, too, was ready to join the fight.
She may be too far away and bound to cast a spell on David, but his bare skin touched the floor. If she did, too, then she just might have found a loophole.
Dani pressed her palms flat to the floor and cast with all the power in her cells. She dragged it out of her muscle fibers and bone and blood, panting and straining at her bindings. She pushed past her previous limits, past the point she’d always feared, when her body temperature toppled.
Her blood changed to slushy ice water in her veins as her skin hardened and turned blue. She screamed, forcing her power out, forcing it across the floor and straight at David.
“Sit tight.” The Carver sneered at her. “It’s almost your turn.”
He didn’t know the shitstorm he’d called down upon himself.
Her power snaked across the floor, crystallizing into a frozen zigzag of witchy goodness. It hit David with a crack and bubbled up, enveloping him in a mini ice tomb impervious to any outside magic. He went limp, his cheek dropping to the floor as Jeff’s magic ceased hurting him.
The Carver turned on her, but before he could say a word, she kicked off her sandal, flattened her bare foot to the ground and said, “Freeze.”
Her power moved faster this time, careening across the ground and sluicing up over their bodies. Neither the Carver nor Jeff moved an inch.
Dani visualized the duct tape binding her hands dropping away, and it did, bursting into tiny hailstones and pelting her feet.
“David?” His reprieve was over. “I need you.” She removed his protective ice shield, and he rose to his hands and knees, pale and shaky and covered in blood. “Channel power into me. As much as you can.”
“This isn’t my spell circle. I don’t have a spell circle.”
He sounded close to losing it, just plopping on the ground and goi
ng quiet for a week or so.
She took his hands in hers, yanking them up between them and cast a temporary branding spell into his skin. “There. Now you do. Point them at me and focus. You can do this.”
David’s palms, covered in spell marks drawn in her ice crystals, aimed so much spirit power at her that she rocked backwards. As she faced their two captors, her hair rose and floated around her shoulders. She gathered her power into her fingertips, and the forces within her pulsed.
Her toes left the ground, and she hovered centimeters above the red carpeting like a dark, vengeful angel.
She was a nightmare come to life. Theirs.
“You are a stripper named Candy,” she said to Jeff. “You can’t see spirits and you don’t do spells.” She released him from his icy hold. “Dance, Candy. And don’t stop.”
Without missing a beat, he pumped his hips, spread his legs, and ground his pelvis into the nearest wall.
“You,” she barked at the Carver, “are going to tell me the truth.” She loosened her spell on him, and he moved again, blinking and shifting, but he didn’t run.
“Who is the Dark Caster?” she asked.
“I don’t know, you bitch. Ask me another.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d ever been called a nasty name, and she refused to let it rattle her. “What is his name?”
“He never told me, you filthy witch whore.”
David shifted uneasily, and his power waned, but she needed him focused, or he’d hurt himself and maybe her, too.
“Ignore him,” she told David. “He’ll suffer for it soon enough.”
“Describe him,” she prompted.
“He’s in his forties, brown hair, brown eyes, skinny, five ten. Now rot, you waste of good power.”
She smiled at his impotent insult because while trapped within her spell it was the worst he could do to her, and they both knew it. “Does the cabal still meet here?” she asked.
“Go fuck yourself.” The Carver spat. “Yes.” He screamed in frustration.
“You should never have threatened Ryan,” she said. “I could have forgiven a lot, but not that.”
She heard the chapel doors to her left bang open, but she didn’t take her eyes off the two casters who had populated her nightmares for days.