by Lily Velez
“Well,” Seamus continued, “I suppose he’d prefer not to tell you, wouldn’t he?
“Prefer not to tell us what?” The T in the last word left Connor’s mouth with a snap of his tongue like a twig cracked in two. “What is he talking about, Jack?”
“Would you care to do the honors, Jack, or should I?”
The soaring menhirs cast a patchwork of shadows across the space. One shadow split Jack into two perfect halves, one bathed in light, the other in darkness. He was still facing Lucas, but Seamus’s question had leeched the color from his face, and a train of thoughts flitted across the surface of his eyes, as if he faced a firing squad and could only be absolved if he figured out the right sequence of words.
Seamus took Jack’s silence as his cue and stepped around the altar, coming closer to us. “I’m afraid your brother’s losing the fight to his own shadow self,” he said. “More and more every day. He’s put on an admirable show for you and the others. He hasn’t wanted any of you to worry. But the truth is the darkness within him is rising.”
“Like hell it is.” Connor marched forward, drew a gun, and stuck it in his uncle’s face, his anger rolling off him in waves, as if he were about to spontaneously combust. There was practically an earthquake rumbling under his skin. “Don’t think I won’t pull this trigger just because we’re blood.”
“Connor, please. I’m not the enemy here. If you don’t believe me, why don’t you ask Jack himself? The truth of the matter is his demon’s mark allowed him three requests. The moment he exhausted all three, the cost would be the immediate collection of his soul, as opposed to having until the Old Moon of his eighteenth year to pay his debt.”
“I know all about that,” Connor snapped, “but he’s only used up one wish.” I saw the surprise on Jack’s face, though he dared not move so long as Lucas’s gun was trained on him.
Seamus let go of a long sigh. For the briefest moment, he was their uncle again, the sadness in his eyes genuine. He didn’t want what he said next to be any truer than the rest of us did. “And then he used up two more in his recent quest to learn what had become of Maurice, summoning demons and asking favors of them to help solve the mystery, thus sealing his fate.”
Your time’s up whether you like it or not, the demon at the rugby game had said. And then Kai’s words came back to me too. The mark only functions in a certain capacity, and once you’re outside of its rules… I had assumed he’d been referring to my ineligibility to make a request, seeing as how I wasn’t the mark’s bearer, but Kai had been hinting to something else altogether: the fact that the mark was no longer valid. Because all of its wishes had already been used. Dread pooled in my stomach as my veins became like ice.
“Why do you think a demon would come for him in broad daylight?” Seamus asked. “It was there to collect Jack’s soul.”
“No,” Connor said, shaking his head, but as I studied Jack’s face, I knew it to be true. It was in the resigned set of his jaw, in the guilt consuming his eyes, in the dark patches under them—the same patches that had graced my own face when I was detoxifying from Kai’s blood.
“Think about it, Connor,” Seamus went on. “After Maurice’s death, Jack insisted you and the others return to St. Andrew’s, didn’t he? He wished to investigate the matter further on his own. Didn’t you ever wonder why? Perhaps you thought he needed space to grieve, but it wasn’t just that. More than anything, he didn’t wish for any of you to know it once he started using dark magic.”
They think he’ll start practicing dark magic? I’d asked Zoe.
Scarlet, she’d said. Some people believe he already does.
But the dark circles under my eyes had faded away after a day, two at most. Jack’s had never left. Which meant…“You’re still practicing.” His losing control when casting runes at the sacred grove of The Wise Ones, his blowing out an entire block of street lamps when separating Connor and Lucas at the inn...possibly even the way his power had cracked the walls of the library outside of Dublin. It’d had nothing to do with the approaching Old Moon. It’d been the kickback from dark magic. Indeed, Jack had only ever said that his brothers believed his coming deadline was the cause of the increase in his power, not that he believed it himself. I considered all the times he’d mysteriously disappeared throughout our journey too. Had he gone off to do something he didn’t want any of us knowing about?
Jack’s body remained still against Lucas’s gun, but his eyes switched to me, and the maelstrom of emotions in them nearly left me breathless. Shame, despair…and was that fear? He worried I’d judge him, condemn him.
It’s only that this whole situation shows it’s easier to lose ourselves to the darker side of magic than most of us think. We want to believe ourselves immune. We want to believe we would never do wrong. But who knows what we’d be capable of if our mind was no longer our own?
Jack’s own words.
He had been speaking of himself the entire time.
“The darker side of magic is unimaginably alluring,” Seamus said. “Once you’ve had a single, addicting taste of it, it can take everything in you to break away. And so few ever succeed. Jack was only able to withstand his first encounter with it because Alison and Redmond policed his entire childhood, ensuring he never step onto that path. Maurice took up the role later on. But it would seem losing the old man was the final tipping point. I knew about Jack the moment the third and final entreaty was satisfied. It’s all the demons of the Otherworld could talk about.”
The rustling leaves were louder in my ears. I tried to ignore them again, but this time, something crawled over the toe of my shoe, forcing me to look down. It took me a moment to make out exactly what I was seeing. I blinked, furrowing my brow. Were those…? Yes, they were. Roots.
My heart sped up, and I threw a quick glance in Rory’s direction. As I expected, he was directing them, sending them toward Lucas. He briefly met my eyes, and I nodded in understanding. We’d have only seconds to act once Lucas was restrained. I was the closest one to him and Jack, so I’d have to be the one to make the move. And I’d have to do so fast.
As the roots steadily made their way to where Lucas stood, keeping to the shadows, I focused on distracting Seamus. “If anyone’s to blame for what happened, it’s you. If it wasn’t for your desire to wake the Soul-Eater, Maurice would still be alive today. Jack would’ve never had to do what he did to get answers.”
The roots were seconds away from Lucas. My heart pounded so hard I feared someone would hear it. I tried to control the throbbing beat at my temples.
“In theory, yes,” Seamus said. “But we must all take responsibility for our actions at one point or another. Jack had a choice. And this is the path he chose.”
“That’s all you have to say about it?” Connor asked, incensed.
The roots encircled Lucas’s feet like a wide-mouthed lasso, coiling once, twice, three times. It was now or never. I looked at Rory and nodded again. I was ready. I faced back ahead, and a heartbeat later, the roots suddenly tightened like a sprung trap, squeezing Lucas’s ankles together. Startled, Lucas tried to jerk away, but he easily lost his balance, and seeing my chance, I threw myself at him in a tackle.
The gun fired, loud and angry and deafening. The sound swallowed my heart whole, but I had no time to see who, if anyone, we’d struck. Lucas and I crashed to the ground hard. I quickly clawed at his shirt as he tried to get away, forcing him back down and scrambling to straddle his back so that I could restrain his hands.
But he was stronger. He roughly turned over, throwing me off him and onto the ground, large, jagged rocks digging hard into my spine like broken pieces of glass. He came on top of me, his fingers closing in around my throat and tightening. The makeshift root bindings on his ankles hardly slowed him down at all.
His hair fell across those red-stained eyes, his cheeks smudged with earth. There was nothing but soulless fury carved into his features. It was hard to reconcile the image with that of the boy who’d
performed card tricks for me, the mischief in his eyes sparkling like so many stars. I thrashed against his weight, trying to buck him off as I felt my windpipe close, but he was immovable. I clawed at his arms, pounded my fists against his elbows. The pressure from his fingers only intensified.
And then suddenly a blur struck the side of Lucas’s head, the impact so hard I heard it when his teeth smacked together. Lucas slumped to the ground, unconscious. Jack stood behind him, one of the large rocks in his hand.
“Enough of this.” Seamus looked to the sky, where the wind set the clouds adrift, undressing the full moon. “It’s time we begin.” He faced The Unredeemed, who hadn’t moved a single muscle since we’d arrived. “You know what to do,” he told them.
Then the men did move. They drew back the hoods of their robes and unmasked themselves. They weren’t men at all. They were fearsome, devilish, monstrous things, creatures straight out of a nightmare. And they were coming right for us.
45
The Unredeemed couldn’t have been more aptly named. It was as if they’d been born out of darkness, born out of the very pits of hell. Each one had the face of a goblin, with wrinkled gray skin, devilish eyes redder than blood, and a salivating mouth filled with dagger-sharp teeth.
“I thought you said they were witches,” I called out to Jack in a panic.
“They are,” Jack said. “Or at least they were. This is what’s left of them.”
Our eyes met, and the air between us was filled with so many unspoken things, not the least of which was Seamus’s revelation about Jack. There were questions I needed to ask him. Why was he still practicing dark magic and to what extent? Kai had said dark magic encompassed many things: some summoned demons to do their bidding like Seamus had done, others drank demon blood as I had, and still others simply practiced forbidden spellcraft. What was Jack’s poison of choice? And did he regret the decision now that he faced The Unredeemed, the very witches who’d lost themselves to dark magic, their spirits becoming these malformed creatures who knew no rest? More importantly, could he still be saved from the grips of dark magic?
My questions would have to wait. The Unredeemed were nearly upon us, forming a wall between us and Seamus as they drew weapons that made up a deadly variety: axes, scythes, and flails among them. The flails were particularly daunting, considering the spikes on each metal ball were the size of half my arm. They backed us out of the ring of torches and further still, until Seamus was several yards out of reach.
Then, without warning, one of them lunged for me, bringing its axe down in an arc so quick the wind whistled against the blade. Jack shoved me out of the way hard, barely clearing the blade himself. And with that, the battle roared to life.
Despite their husky build, The Unredeemed moved with stunning dexterity and speed. They were a blur of shadows as they rushed at us, metal clanging against metal and flesh smashing into flesh in a terrifying orchestra. I scrambled to my feet and rushed over to Lucas, slowly turning him over. His eyes were closed, and I didn’t dare open them, fearing the red that might still be lurking there. Though there was no way to know for sure if he was still under Seamus’s influence, I couldn’t just leave him here. He’d get trampled over or crushed in the fray.
Standing, I grabbed him from under the shoulders and hauled him out of harm’s way, surprised by the weight of him despite his lithe frame. My muscles strained as I dragged him step by step. I deposited him by a tree and made quick work of untying his shoelaces, which I used to restrain his hands behind his back. Hopefully, when he regained consciousness, he was our Lucas again, but I had to err on the side of caution for now.
With Lucas taken care of, I quickly surveyed the scene before me, trying to decide where I was most needed. Jack faced off with an especially large opponent, hurling orbs of striking blue light at it. At first, I thought he was employing some sort of Mastery, but then lightning cracked powerfully overhead, a white harpoon cleaving the sky in two. He was calling upon the Quarters. He shot the lightning-filled orbs at the Unredeemed, and they exploded against the creature on impact, throwing it yards back and setting its flesh on fire. The Unredeemed let out an ear-splitting screech, the stench of burning flesh nauseating.
I assumed that would be the end of the creature. It wasn’t. It roared as it righted itself, but it didn’t immediately charge for Jack again. I thought perhaps it was hesitant, or that at the very least it was appraising Jack as a worthy opponent it had grossly underestimated.
I was wrong.
The Unredeemed rolled its head along its neck and rotated one shoulder after another before puffing out its chest. A moment later, a hand pressed against the skin of the creature’s abdomen—from the inside. A second hand joined beside the first. Both pushed out further and further, stretching the skin like thinning dough until the flesh ruptured, bile spilling everywhere. From the cavity in the abdomen, a new creature crawled out, all spindly limbs and wicked eyes and hungry teeth, its gray flesh slimy. And then a second creature emerged, and a third, and a fourth. Until the Unredeemed had produced seven copies of itself in total. When the last creature crawled out, the gap in the original’s chest sealed up as if the wound had never existed to begin with.
My stomach twisted itself into knots. They could multiply themselves. We’d already been outnumbered. Now we’d be even more so.
Dizzy, I checked to see how the others were holding up. Rory did his best to restrain his opponents with tree roots, but the roots could only snake across the ground so quickly, and even when they bound their targets, the Unredeemed easily broke free of their restraints. Zoe and Connor worked together to fend off half a dozen Unredeemed at once, their movements like poetry in motion. Zoe had disarmed one of the creatures of its spear, and she twirled it dangerously fast, impaling one Unredeemed after another. She tossed the spear easily to Connor, exchanging it for the dagger he threw back to her, and neither missed a step as they swung into their next attack, dodged a punch or swipe, and then went in for the kill. But just as had happened to Jack, the Unredeemed they faced only multiplied until what had begun as a ragtag assembly of creatures now quickly escalated into an army of dozens.
The only way to end this was to strike a blow at the source.
I honed in on Seamus.
He stood behind the altar, loudly chanting. The words didn’t sound like Irish. It was a language far more ancient than that, something that sounded like it had been around since before the beginning of mankind. Something that sounded unfathomably evil. A demon tongue? I shuddered at the thought. Though I didn’t understand what he was saying, the words pulled at my stomach, ran icy fingers down my spine.
The cauldron started to glow, the boiling water inside gurgling more violently. Slowly, a wisp of red light rose from the cauldron. Like a snake, it weaved through the air until it attached itself to one of the menhirs. Another wisp followed soon after, forming a tight thread between the cauldron and a second menhir. The same happened with a third.
It was beginning.
My heart accelerated as I removed the Hallowstone from my pocket. Gripping it tightly, I rushed headlong into the battle, my eyes focused only on Seamus as I charged through the commotion of snarling creatures, weaving through gaps like a thread in a loom, my free hand itching for the knife Zoe had given me should I need to quickly free it from its holster at my waist. When I was halfway to Seamus, I sped even faster, half carried by adrenaline alone, the only sound in my ears the pounding of my feet against the hard-packed earth. I was so close. I was almost there…
“Scarlet, watch out!”
Before I could react, a force rammed into me from the side, the impact so brutal my entire skeleton rattled within its skin. I went sailing through the air, and when I met the ground, a burst of light filled my vision as the breath flew out of my lungs in a throbbing rush. Blades of grass crunched underneath approaching footfalls as my attacker drew closer. My head was spinning, my vision nothing but black spots and wobbly landscapes. I desperate
ly patted the ground around me for the fallen Hallowstone, ignoring the roaring pain in my ribs. No. Where was it?
A hand fisted my hair at the skull and roughly jerked me to my feet. I cried out in pain, but the sound died in the back of my throat when I found myself face to face with one of The Unredeemed. They were even uglier up close. This one had few teeth left in its slimy, rancid-smelling gums. The ones it did have, though dangerously sharp, were decaying and covered in plaque, gnats darting from one to the other. The Unredeemed brought its face in close to my neck, inhaling the smell of me and drawing its rough tongue along my skin. I squirmed against it, stretching my fingers for the knife at my waist.
“I’m going to swallow you bone by tasty bone,” the creature snarled.
“Swallow this.” I tightened my grip on the knife’s hilt, yanked it free, and jammed the blade into the creature’s neck.
It shrieked, flinging me to the ground. I scrabbled away, falling twice as I tried to get to my feet, ignoring the fiery sprain in my ankle. Gritting my teeth, I pushed forward. My gaze swung back and forth across the ground as I scanned the earth for a glimpse of the Hallowstone.
“No, no, no.” Where had it gone? I reached out for it with my magic, but a growl from behind stopped me. I looked over my shoulder. The creature I’d stabbed had gathered its bearings and was striding my way. With no weapon at my disposal, I had no other choice but to abandon the Hallowstone for now and run toward Jack and the others, where there was safety in numbers.
Chaos met me everywhere. Moments ago, I’d had a clear opening to Seamus. Now there were dozens of Unredeemed where there hadn’t been any before. They were multiplying faster than we could keep up. I spotted a dropped gun a yard away from me and snatched it up, pulling the trigger at a creature who was coming hard at Zoe. I wasn’t prepared for the recoil, my arms jerking back slightly from the pressure. But once I knew what to expect, I moved my feet farther apart to ground myself and fired a volley of bullets at every Unredeemed near me, the vibration of the discharges making my bones hum, each deafening pop of gunfire pounding against my eardrums. One particular Unredeemed started racing toward me. I shot at it, dispatching one bullet after another. Its head and torso jerked back with each impact, but it continued forward nonetheless, teeth bared and vying for my flesh. That is until Connor struck it hard from the side, bringing it down.