Stray Magic

by Kelly Meding

  In order to pass through something, I had to vibrate my body at an atomic level, fast enough to match the vibrations of the other material and allow our atoms to mingle. Ever the handicap, my human half makes it feel as though my body is on fire, consuming itself from the inside out by white flame and agony. Full djinn did it with a smile on their faces.

  I pressed my ear to the door and listened. No footsteps, no breathing, no voices. Bracing for the inevitable agony, I placed both palms flat against the door and closed my eyes. Felt around for the spark of djinn power I usually ignored—the spark that fueled my Quarrel, my wish magic, and my ability to walk through walls.

  Found it.

  Lava flooded my veins. I was on fire, being ripped apart as I began moving through the wood door. Some tiny, rational part of my brain insisted I’d be foiled by an exterior cage door. But either Weller didn’t know this fun fact about djinn, or he assumed I couldn’t do it.

  I came out on the other side in a haze of agony and fell to my knees. Everything tilted sideways and spun in circles, both clockwise and counterclockwise, fast enough to make me dizzy. I held on until it stopped, fingers digging into the smooth wood floor beneath my hands. Sweat trickled down my nose and cheeks.

  And then it was over. The world righted itself, and the consuming pain fled with my dizziness. I swallowed. Rubbed the bridge of my nose. The headache remained a dull thud behind my eyes, a constant reminder of how lucky I was to have survived the car crash at all.

  No alarms sounded. No one came running. The hallway was deserted, its plain, ivory walls devoid of personal artifacts. No rug on the old floorboards, which squeaked beneath my feet. I checked four other doors as quietly as I could. One was a bathroom, dirty and in need of an updated tub. Three bedroom doors stood open, displaying their dusty, unused rooms. One had a cot like mine. The other two boasted a couple of spiderwebs.

  If the farmhouse had an attic or third floor, I found no evidence or stairway. I reached the top of the stairs and paused to listen. I caught the faint odors of fried food. Someone had cooked recently. The stairs opened to the room below halfway down and would expose me to anyone watching. With a careful breath, I descended as far as I dared, then bent at the waist and with a hand on the banister, peeked.

  An empty living room presented itself. The furniture was somewhat dated, but clean. The fireplace had a fresh stack of logs next to it. Attached, off to my right, was a dining room, complete with matching table and chairs, its flat surface covered in used paper plates and plastic cups. Whoever was staying here didn’t like doing dishes . . . or cleaning up after themselves.

  The kitchen seemed to be off to the left somewhere. My means of escape—the front door!—presented itself directly ahead of me. I tiptoed to the bottom of the stairs. Listened. Halfway to the door I stopped. The house didn’t seem to have more upper floors, but that didn’t preclude a basement. We were at sea level, so basements weren’t common, but they did exist in old homes. Ancient root cellars, mostly.

  I tested the front door and found it, not surprisingly, locked. It had a metal plate on the bottom half, probably storm reinforcement or something, but it blocked me from going through. I turned around and spotted another door nearby, hidden in the corner of the living room like a dirty secret. Probably a coat closet, but I checked it anyway. The knob surprised me by turning beneath my grip.

  It squealed softly, and before I had the door open more than a few inches, the thick odor of waste wafted out on a gust of hot air. I swallowed back the need to cough and retch, then pulled the door open completely. And stared.

  Coat closet, sans coats. Its only decoration was Vincent, curled haphazardly on the floor like a sack of dropped laundry. His ankles and wrists were handcuffed, and a length of cloth was tied over his mouth and eyes. He was pale, bare-chested, dressed only in a pair of white boxers stained with filth.

  I couldn’t find any tears for him. Only a cool splash of directed rage. Directed right at Adam Weller and his pals. I crouched next to Vincent and, even though I saw the soft rise and fall of his chest, pressed two shaking fingertips to his throat. Felt a thready pulse.

  “Thank Iblis,” I whispered. “Vincent?”

  Nothing. He was out cold, either from drugs, magic, or a serious concussion. Then I felt the wetness coating the side of his neck I couldn’t see. My fingertips came back stained with blood, and I swallowed a scream. Turned his head a little to the side and saw the twin puncture marks. He’d been drained to the point of unconsciousness. My rage quadrupled.

  I kissed his forehead, wanting to promise all sorts of things to him. I just didn’t have the time.

  I hated myself for closing the door on him, but I couldn’t risk someone entering the house and realizing I was moving around. I had to stop the necromancer first. Then I’d call an ambulance and finally, I’d beat the shit out of Weller for every one of my friends he’d hurt.

  I tiptoed across the living room, moving into the kitchen. It was the only somewhat updated room in the house, with new appliances and paper sacks of groceries littering the counter. Dirty pots and pans filled the sink. Their combined stink of bacon grease, old soup broth, and scorched cheese turned my stomach. Gross.

  I hazarded a peek out the back door. Still facing the backyard, I saw nothing I hadn’t noticed from the upstairs—strike that. I had a decent view of a small shed perpendicular to the barn that had probably been hidden from above by one of those massive oak trees. Inside of the shed was the twisted, damaged shell of the Expedition. My weapons were there, unless they’d been seized, and the vehicle’s appearance only cemented the notion that Weller had caused the accident. But how had he known where we’d be on the road?

  Yet another mystery that would need to wait.

  A quick check of the pantry located my prize—cellar door. I pulled back the dead bolt and opened it. The hinges squealed. I winced. Down below, someone grunted. I knew that grunt.

  Hope lit a flare in my belly. I flipped a switch by the basement door. A single bulb brightened the dirt-dug room below and the rickety wooden stairs descending to a hard-packed earth floor. The grunt repeated itself, closer to a growl this time. The old stairs were impossible to take quietly, so I settled on quickly. I hit the bottom and turned to my right.

  Novak was chained to the dirt wall, naked except for his black boxers. His legs were immobilized, as were his chest and shoulders. His hands, though, were clamped into twin containers of brackish liquid that fizzed like peroxide. Sweat drizzled down his ebony skin, and his mouth was twisted in pain. His dark eyes stared at me as if he’d never seen me before.

  “You’re alive,” I said as utter relief hit me square in the gut. The weight of it made my knees wobble.

  He didn’t speak. The bulging muscles in his throat and neck spoke to his imminent loss of control. I let my gaze drop to the vats of liquid, and it finally hit me—they were torturing him. I doubted it was acid. That lacked finesse. It’s a little known fact that demons are allergic to salt. They can’t ingest salty foods, and the ocean is a huge problem, which made Novak hiding on a peninsula surrounded by salt water rather ingenious. Likely it’s what they’d stuck his hands into.

  The chains were secured with simple padlocks. I raced back upstairs and rummaged in the drawers, haste making me a little stupid. No keys, of course, so I found a kitchen knife with a narrow point and some kind of skewer thingie. I wasn’t much of a lock-pick, but I had to try something. I’d seen Jaxon do it a dozen times.

  “Hold on, pal,” I said to Novak as I grabbed the lock near his right arm. He merely grunted, then closed his eyes. I swallowed hard. After a minute or so of wiggling and turning, the lock popped open. I unwounded the chains and pulled his right hand free of the vat. The skin was completely blistered, individual fingers looking as though they’d been created from dozens of tiny brown marbles instead of skin over bone. Some of the blisters burst and wept.

  The same length of chain wound around his neck and down his left arm. A mo
ment later, I had his second hand out. I didn’t have to examine it to know how it looked, and the deep release of air from Novak sent a surge of fury through me. Someone had hurt my friend badly.

  He sagged away from the wall and somehow remained on his own two feet. I didn’t try to prop him up or offer my arm. He was a demon and too proud to accept my help as long as he could manage alone. It didn’t stop me from planting a kiss on his chin, as close as I could get to his face without him stooping.

  “Sorry I took so long,” I said.

  He shook his head, dismissing my apology. With a sweaty forearm, he wiped his equally sweaty brow and flinched. “Kathleen?”

  My chest ached. I gave him the highlights of the last few hours while he gathered his strength. His thoughts were impossible to guess from the stone-cold glare on his face. I finished with the crash, waking up here, and finding Vincent alive and still (as far as I could tell) human.

  Novak flared his nostrils. “Don’t remember much after the crash,” he said. “Weller tried to make me talk, tell him what I knew about what you were up to.” He snorted like a furious bull. “Waste of his time. I’ll rip his blessed heart out through his throat for Kathleen,” he said.

  And Jaxon. For all of us.

  “We need to find the pentagram,” I said, starting toward the stairs. “They’ve had Tennyson long enough to start the revenancy spell.”

  “Thought they had to torture him a while before it could work.”

  I glared over my shoulder. He frowned, but didn’t argue further. His bulky body made silence on the stairs impossible. I darted to the top and kept lookout as he ascended. The house remained silent. Weller obviously hadn’t expected me to walk through walls, or he’d have had a guard or two on the place. Score one for the good guys.

  “They towed our vehicle here, so with any luck we’ve got weapons,” I said quietly once Novak joined me in the kitchen.

  He raided the drawers with hands that looked ready to shrivel up and fall off, and produced a handful of knives—steak, chopping, chef, and one little paring knife. Lacking pockets in his boxers, he palmed what he could manage, then handed three over to me. Better safe than sorry, his intent frown said to me. I agreed. We still had to get across the yard, and lights from the farm and half-moon gave us few shadows.

  I slipped out the back door and onto a small porch. Two faded wicker armchairs kept company with a rusty, potbellied barbecue grill. Faint odors of charred meat mixed with the faraway tang of cow manure. I’d never understand how people lived so close to such a nauseating stink.

  The barn was directly across from us and the likeliest place to find the pentagram. More than fifty feet of empty yard lay between us and the shed sheltering our weapon stash. Another twenty or so from the shed to the barn. Watchful eyes could be anywhere: the trees, the upper level of the barn, hiding in the shed itself.

  A tremor tore down my spine, spreading chills along my back and shoulders. The cool scent of cloves came out of nowhere, and I recognized it immediately. Tennyson was in pain. I sought the tether. It was so faint as to almost not exist anymore, tapering off only a few feet from me, as though dissolved by stronger magic.

  Stronger magic. That horrified me on so many levels. If Tennyson was projecting pain this far and through so much magic, then the spell had begun.

  “Shi?” Novak hissed.

  I swallowed and then pointed at the shed. “There. Weapons.”

  He lumbered across the yard, not quite at full steam, and I followed. I expected warning shouts, maybe even a few bullets to rip through me. Weller apparently had something more elegant planned, because a few steps from the shed doors, six figures emerged from the shadows. Novak pulled up short, and I nearly slammed into his back.

  The vampires—more from Azuriah’s line?—bared their fangs, eyes swirling a familiar red-black. Impossible. How could the necromancer control these six, plus the twelve at Myrtle’s Acres, and still perform the spell to change Tennyson? They didn’t give me a chance to truly ponder it. The six attacked without hesitation, swarming us like vermin.

  I slashed with my knives and ducked blows, letting adrenaline work away the last of my headache—promising a new, stronger one later—and propelled my body into the fray. Novak roared. Blood spurted. The vamps hissed as they darted in and out, slashing with their claws and snapping with their jaws. I lunged at one’s throat, but it pulled away before my butcher knife made contact and I realized that they weren’t trying to kill us.

  They were distracting us.

  Novak seemed to get this, too, and bellowed his frustration. No sense in being quiet about it now. Sick of the dancing, I tackled the nearest vamp and sliced her throat as we fell. Hot blood poured over my hands, and I rolled away. She floundered in the grass. I took another swing, hoping to sever her head from her neck and truly end her, but another vamp hit me from behind.

  We went rolling. I held the blade away from my body, in no mood to cut myself and get another infection. The vamp on my back slammed my forehead into the ground. Bright lights burst behind my eyes. I snapped my head backward and connected with cartilage. Blood flowed down my back.

  Behind me somewhere, Novak made a terrible sound—something close to agonized ecstasy, and I knew the demon in him was rejoicing in the slaughter. He was also projecting a lot of pheromones, because the muscles in my abdomen clenched of their own volition. Dear Iblis, I did not need this right now. Ignoring my sudden arousal, I shook off the broken-nose vamp and rolled to my knees. He lunged, and I buried the blade in his throat hard enough to protrude from the back of his neck. He fell.

  Novak dropped someone’s severed arm and snorted long and loud. Pieces of four vampires littered the ground around him, and his dark skin was coated with shiny crimson. It dripped from his bald head, his ears and nose, down his arms and blistered fingers. He bared his teeth at me, chest heaving, a deadly fire in his eyes. He also had a massive hard-on that his boxers were having a hard time hiding.

  So rarely have I ever seen our incubus lose control. His body shook with small tremors, head to toe, as he fought an internal battle to remain calm. Meanwhile, I fought his infernal pheromones—ice, ocean, cold, frozen tundra, unsexy things—and battled against their power. If he caught scent of me in a half-aroused state . . . oh, boy, he’d lose it completely. And a bloodlust-crazed incubus was not gentle—whether or not it killed me, he’d never forgive himself for it.

  Still kneeling on the ground, I remained still. Focused. Calm. Even though my insides quivered like jelly. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I wouldn’t let him—

  He released a massive breath, and the fire in his eyes died. Then they widened. I felt the whoosh of air behind me, but I couldn’t move fast enough. The barrel of a gun pressed between my shoulder blades. Novak screamed something indecipherable. The ground by his feet burst twice, gunshots cracking off to my left. Another figure circled into my peripheral vision, armed with a shiny new SIG Sauer.

  Lars Patterson held his weapon on Novak. The golden-skinned man’s face was impassive, almost bored. Novak ignored him, though, his intense glare focused on the person behind me.

  “My, my, you’ve been busy.” The familiar voice sent icy daggers through my guts. It couldn’t be.

  Novak bared his teeth, the furious snarl only proving what I didn’t want to be true. A hand bunched in my hair and hauled me to my feet, the gun never leaving my back. Kathleen leaned over my shoulder, her cool breath fanning my face.

  “So glad you could join us for the finale,” she said.

  Chapter 21

  In the face of discovering one of my supposed allies was a lying traitorous bitch, I thought I’d be angrier. I expected to be furious, disgusted, maybe even feel idiotic for not seeing it sooner. Instead, all I felt was sad. Sad for how she’d fooled us all, sad for Julius, sad for everyone who’d been hurt because of her and Weller.

  Okay, and a little stupid for not seeing through her in the first place.

  “You do reali
ze what this means?” I asked, amazed at my calm tone.

  “And what’s that, Shiloh?” Her breath was still in my ear, cool and ticklish. “You must now swear to kill me for my traitorous ways?”

  “No—it means no Christmas bonus for you.” I jammed my elbow back, striking the hard planes of her abdomen. She grunted. The butt of her gun came down between my shoulder blades, and a bolt of lightning slammed through my head. I dropped to my knees, stunned by the blow, my brain once again throbbing inside my skull.

  “Behave yourself,” Kathleen spat.

  “Why, so you can kill me later, instead of sooner?”

  “Do not tempt me.”

  Before my fuzzy brain could puzzle that statement, a phone buzzed behind me. I glanced at Novak. His glare hadn’t shifted from Kathleen, even though Lars was bearing down on him with a loaded weapon. Kathleen answered her phone with a clipped, “Yes?” Pause. “I’ll bring them down.”

  Uh-oh.

  She grabbed my arm and yanked me up. I stumbled. Even my djinn half could only withstand so many blows to the head in one hour. Novak came to my side. We allowed our captors to guide us forward, toward the wide double doors of the barn. It was a traditional shape and size, painted the usual red with white trim. Upper doors and a pulley hinted at a hay loft above.

  “Go on through,” Kathleen said.

  I reached for the door. She sighed and gave me a mighty shove. I raised my shoulder, expecting to slam into wood. Instead, I stumbled through the illusion of barn doors and came to a knee-scraping stop just inside. Much like the floor of the storage unit, the barn was an illusion to hide something more insidious.

  The metal structure was built in the shape of a pentagram, and it rose up like a menacing silver circus tent. The wall was only a few feet shy of the barn’s illusion, and a metal door was a few steps away, closed. Power thrummed through the metal—not silver, but something powerful and able to conduct energy. It must have been constructed to amplify the necromancer’s powers.