Blood Magic

by Jayne Hawke

  “We still need to get close to her,” Dean said.

  “You’ve been trying to get to her. Why not just bring her to us?” Sin asked.

  “No,” Ethan said flatly.

  “No what?” I asked.

  “He wants to offer you up as a bounty or a tool,” Ethan said.

  “That actually hadn’t crossed my mind. I was thinking that I could say I have found one of their lost flock being held captive by some big bad dogs,” Sin said.

  “So you want to lure them in to come and save me?” I said.

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “What makes you think they’d fall for that?” Dean asked.

  “Blood witches aren’t very common. They’ll be curious to see if you’re tied to them somehow even if they don’t fall for the lost member of the coven thing. All I need is one of your hairs so they can feel your blood magic. Either, they feel you’re a pure blood witch and come to see if you can help them. Or, they feel the corruption due to your god magic and come to save you,” Sin said.

  “Why I don’t just go myself? You said they’ll be able to feel the corruption, so I’ll tell them I was experimented on like they were and draw them out,” I said.

  “That’s too dangerous,” Ethan said.

  “Seriously?” I pushed back.

  “I wouldn’t allow anyone in this pack to go alone into that situation,” Ethan said.

  That made me feel a little better, but I still hated it. A big part of me wanted to push back and prove I could do it. I decided that was just the god magic trying to push me into a bigger more interesting fight and ignored it.

  “How are you going to draw them out to us?” I asked Sin.

  “I’ll say that the pack are moving you, and I know of a perfect opportunity to grab you,” Sin said.

  “No. Tell them Kit was experimented on and wishes to join them, but she’s in hiding due to her broken magic. You’re her intermediary. They’re more likely to buy that,” Ethan said.

  Sin nodded.

  “So be it. Now, where am I leading them to?”

  FORTY-FIVE

  “Ok, so we’re drawing these witches out. How do we kill them?” Cade asked.

  I’d been half of the night reading through the books on blood magic that I’d been able to find.

  “Poisoned blood. I can corrupt my blood and act as bait,” I said as I glared at Ethan, warning him not to argue.

  “How exactly will that work?” Ethan ground out.

  “I can toy with the magic in my own blood. The god magic will protect me. Then I act as bait, act injured or something. They start absorbing my blood, and then they’re poisoned and weak, ready for you to kill them,” I said.

  “It’s too much of a risk to have you as the only bait. Work your magic on my blood too,” Sin said.

  “No, it-” Ethan started.

  “You know as well as I do that it will be far easier for your fledging witch to corrupt my blood than yours. Your ties to death make your blood more... complicated,” Sin said, cutting him off.

  Ethan seethed.

  “It might hurt. A lot,” I said.

  Sin shrugged.

  “I am not going to back down from this quest because of a little pain,” he said.

  He glanced at his watch.

  “I need to leave. We will do whatever ritual you need to do when I return.”

  Once Sin had left to go and meet the witches, Ethan turned to me.

  “There must be another way.”

  “We could get lucky and overwhelm them with your death magic and my god magic, but they’re strong. Do you want to take that risk?”

  “I like the sound of it better than using you as bait,” Ethan growled.

  I reached up and caressed his cheek, feeling the rough stubble press against my palm.

  “We’re pack, and you know as an alpha that we need to do whatever is best for the pack as a whole. This is the least risky option,” I said.

  He narrowed his eyes at me.

  “I will not lose you.”

  I smiled and leaned in against his chest.

  “No, you won’t. You need to let me do this.”

  He wrapped his arms around me and rested his cheek against my temple.

  “We will do whatever it takes to kill them if there’s even a hint of this going sideways,” he said.

  “I know,” I said with a smile.

  I couldn’t let Ethan know how nervous I was about this entire process and idea. I’d read about the blood twisting in a book. I had no idea if I really had the skill to do it. All I knew was it was our best chance of killing the witches without losing one of our own. I was not going to lose one of my pack because I didn’t have the backbone to step up when they needed me to.

  “The meeting is arranged for tomorrow at two in the park near the walls,” Sin said.

  Ethan nodded and said nothing.

  “Do you need anything for the ritual?” the elf asked.

  “No. We’ll do it tomorrow morning. Doing it too early poses too many risks,” I said, hoping I sounded more confident than I felt.

  The elf gave me a small smile and a nod of understanding before he settled himself down in a chair and watched the pack mill around.

  No one relaxed that night. Everyone was on tenterhooks as we watched the clock tick, waiting for the time to come. This was dangerous, possibly more dangerous than anything we’d tried before. If I got the ritual wrong, then we could die, or worse. The pack knew that, but no one brought it up, and I appreciated that.

  Ethan kept me close and offered his silent support. I was tempted to sleep in his arms, but I knew that I’d only toss and turn. That wasn’t fair on him. In the end, I spent most of the night reading and re-reading the ritual, making sure that I had every detail straight in my head. It looked so simple on paper, but I knew that one slight misstep and we’d both be completely screwed.

  No pressure.

  FORTY-SIX

  Sin stood before me with a calm expression. My heart was hammering in chest as though trying to break free from its prison. I swallowed and tried to settle my nerves. My witch magic was alive and eager to begin the process. Sin’s magic sang like a beautiful choir. The brilliant sparks in his blood pulsed and called to me to reach in and pluck them.

  Ethan squeezed my shoulder, and the tension faded. The pack was right there. Ethan was barely a step away. Rolling my shoulders, I told myself this was easy. Just reach in and twist his blood. No big deal.

  My witch magic didn’t need any nudges to surge forwards and dive into Sin’s blood. His eyes widened slightly as I felt the fine threads of my magic wrap around those beautiful sparks within his blood. I could almost taste the sweet honeyed tones of his blood on my tongue. It would have been so easy to pull, and it would all be mine.

  Gritting my teeth, I pushed past those dark urges and formed the delicate threads of the magic coursing through his blood in my mind. Slowly, I aligned my own threads of magic with his, and then I began twisting. One little movement to the left, enough to add a small kink to the thread. Then again, and again, until it looked like old knotted string.

  Now for the truly complicated part. Sin wouldn’t be able to continue his life with his blood permanently in that state. I set small notches along the threads and kinks in the blood magic. Slowly, those notches would widen until they broke the twists I’d placed, and the magic in his blood would spring back to normal. That meant we were working within a timeframe. We had one shot at this.

  Stepping back, I gave Sin a small nod. He returned the nod and accepted the sweet tea Kerry handed him. Working with my own magic was far easier. I felt the change when I opened my eyes. The world was darker, greyer. A soft melancholy had settled over me. I knew it was part of what I had inflicted on myself, but I still desperately wanted to shake it off.

  “Are we ready?” Ethan asked.

  The pack had spent the morning preparing for war. Everyone had been given as many weapons as they could carry along wit
h magic-enhancing potions and an armful of healing potions. Matt was remaining home at the safe house. He wasn’t a fighter, and I didn’t want that to change.

  I triple-checked that my daggers were in place and tried to ignore the weight in my veins from the twisting of my witch magic. It would all be over soon.

  The deal was that I would be alone. Sin was hiding up in the trees along with Kerry. The rest of the pack were hiding nearby. I casually strode across the white space with a small smile upon my face, trying to give off an air of someone ready to enter a new coven.

  I was ready to begin pacing in front of the broad-trunked oak tree when I finally saw them approaching. I should have been able to feel them. Even in my odd state, my witch magic was alive and well enough to feel most witches coming from a good distance off. Not them. I hoped that we hadn’t underestimated their power.

  The woman leading the group appeared to be in her mid-thirties with a black bob hanging down to her shoulders. Everything about her seemed to be average, from her pale grey coat to her black jeans and sturdy brown boots. Nothing about her was memorable, and I wondered how hard they had worked to achieve that.

  “We can make you great, if you’ll let us. All we ask for is loyalty,” she said.

  “I heard that you suffered like I did,” I said.

  “We have turned our pain into power. We will help you do the same. Together, we’ll rise through the ranks and enjoy power the likes of which no witch has enjoyed before,” she said.

  I allowed myself a broad smile.

  “What do I have to do?” I asked.

  A woman with long coppery hair approached.

  “I am Maeve, the leader of our fine coven. You’re the first I’ve heard of that survived what we went through,” she said.

  “I was the only one. They killed the rest of my coven,” I said.

  She nodded.

  Something changed in her expression. It was subtle at first, a slight pinching her mouth and narrowing of her eyes.

  Nothing was said for a long few moments before she finally said, “You are Kit MacGowan.”

  Well shit.

  The red-headed woman took another step closer to me. I felt the pack tense behind me.

  “Your mother is to blame for this.”

  “No,” I said reflexively.

  “Yes. She could have helped us. She could have reversed this curse that has been laid upon us. Her magical skill was easily the most advanced of any witch on this isle. Her knowledge was second to none, and she turned us away. Why? Because she saw something in us that she didn’t like. Do you know what that feels like? To be turned away because of something someone thought they felt within you?”

  I remained silent.

  The woman took another step closer.

  “You will die as the others did. You will suffer in the place of your mother. She should not have forsaken us.”

  “That sounds awful. Why don’t I just kill you now, then no one has to suffer anymore?”

  Her face was a portrait in shocked outrage, frozen in time as I wrenched at my war magic, agony shooting up my spine and down my arms as the swords I’d been working on for so long finally extended from the backs of my hands, firmly anchored and all but weightless. I threw a punch that drove the tip of the 18” sword into her right eye and twisted through until it passed out the back of her head, blood running down the shining white blade at an unnatural rate.

  She never even had time to react.

  I quickly drew on her magic before her coven could react, leaving the blood she’d already spilled magicless and inert and letting the energy sweep through my own magic, cleaning all the kinks out until I was at full strength.

  The pack had already spotted it going wrong and rushed the scene, a wave of matte-black weaponry on black-clad warriors, all but Sin who was going for an Aragorn look and a sword that glowed with a faint rainbow iridescence. I was going to have to work on my style.

  I made a horizontal slash with both weapons to keep the surviving witches at bay, expecting them half a second behind their sisters, only to find that they had all stopped to open the mechanisms of what appeared to be permanent stainless-lined wounds along each forearm that were gushing blood by the pint. By the feel of it, only a small part of it was theirs. They’d been storing the blood they stole and... what? Waiting to gross me out with it at a critical moment?

  If so, it was working.

  Sadly, their designs were less prosaic. As the blood covered their forearms, it began to pool in their hands, gravitationally immune spherical globules of dark red blood like something out of a space horror film. I watched in stunned horror as an entire coven of madwomen bled themselves dry and began to form weapons, shields, armour, even familiars out of stolen blood.

  A knife flew from one witch’s palm-borne reserve towards my head, and I deflected it with my sword expecting it to be like blocking a squirt gun. Instead, it clunked hard against my weapon and flew off behind me. This was going to be even less fun than it looked. The pack arrived right on cue as the preliminaries ended and the coven of blood witches started applying their strange, horrifying take on the art to visiting on me the sins of my mother.

  I advanced a step, swords at the ready, and fielded two more blood knives as I did. Even as the pack advanced, they were focused on me. If I could maintain my defensive, the pack would go through their distracted asses like a reaper’s scythe. I took another step forward, making myself a threat, and continued fending off flying shards of human blood. I couldn’t stop focusing on that fact, and a blade got through my defences as I did, punching a hole directly in my breastbone and lodging there. It was quickly pushed out by my own blood, which began to be pulled out in a stream as our enemy’s grasped onto it to add to their collection.

  I pulled back with my own magic, taking the magic from the blood and leaving it to fall, inert, to the ground, the tug of war avoided. I sealed the wound so tight it was probably less permeable than my actual skin and shouted to the rest to avoid wounds of any kind.

  Of course, that wouldn’t be hard for them since the witches’ offensive efforts were entirely focused on me. Each had raised a shield of some kind, whether a conventional kite shield, a flying disc, or in one particularly unsettling case a massive force-field bubble out of a Hellraiser nightmare and were fending off the pack the best they could while keeping their attacks focused on me.

  I applauded their creativity even as I gladly noted that they hadn’t thought of things like drowning or pore infiltration yet. I took a page from their book and called up a riot shield from my war magic, noting gratefully that it was being unusually helpful for a change. Shining like the pearly gates, it allowed me to remain altogether hidden from them as long as I didn’t mind losing visibility in every direction except straight forward through its viewing window.

  Their attacks didn’t let up, hard thud-crack-thud impacts pelting the shield. They quickly realized that a war god’s shield wasn’t something they could smash apart in the timeframe they had and began attacking indirectly, trying to bring their projectiles in through the sides. Their aim was mercifully bad without being able to see me, but it wasn’t long before I started feeling slices along my sides as their aim improved. I dutifully closed the wounds, but it wasn’t a standoff that could last forever. Or even another minute, for that matter.

  “Anybody feel like killing some witches today? Not that I’m not enjoying testing out some new toys, you understand, just kind of bleeding more than would be ideal,” I shouted, sarcasm blunting the real message that I was dying, and it was up to them to change that.

  A feline snarl answered me followed by the click and scrape of claws on what I could only assume was a mass of magically imbued blood. I turned my view to see Kerry half cat latched onto the force field witch with all four paws, her teeth sunk deep into it but the field holding. The sound of weapons clashing rose in tenor, and the weapons headed my way waned, but it wasn’t enough. I needed to be in this fight, or I was goin
g to be dog food when it was done. I loved my dogs, but they had enough at home.

  Pulling up all the strength and rage my father had left me, I roared my pain to the sky and rushed them shield first. Ethan and Cade parted as I reached them, and the women they’d been fighting had only a moment to know what was coming before I struck them, throwing them backwards with their blood orbs splashing to the ground.

  “Kill them all!” I shouted in a voice that was barely mine, my vocal cords shearing open as the magic pushed through them.

  Blood ran down my face in rivulets and I dropped the shield, pushing to my right into the still-distracted line of four. As I did, I felt a wall of force hit me from behind, knocking me forward into the blade and shield of the nearest witch and knocking the breath out of me in the process. How had I forgotten that there were ten of them to begin with? The original line was shaken by my declaration but not out of the fight. The witch I was flying towards swept her blade up to catch me in the ribs, but had the weapon knocked aside by one of my packmates. I wasn’t so lucky with her shield, the corner of which caught me in the side of the head and threw me to the side, dazed and nauseated.

  She turned towards me, but a scream told me that someone had taken advantage of her inattention to put her down. I had the time I needed to get myself back in order. As she died, the blood she’d drained from our fair city fell like a burst water balloon. I rushed to drain it of magic, needing the power to heal and knowing one of her sisters would add it to their collection almost immediately if they could. It felt sour, almost globular, like fruit juice out of date. The power in it felt like it was as likely to melt through my veins as heal me, and the dust that remained of her weapons was, if anything, worse. As I lay there, trying to sort some pure energy from the morass, I felt three sharp pains strike my back in unison and knew that I could either heal or die.

  I grasped onto the whole mass of it in a quick and dirty webwork and soaked it in, my magic almost gagging as I did. I tried to process it, to bring it into line with my life force so that I could heal with it, do anything with it, but everything it touched felt corrupted, like my soul was slimy. I couldn’t purify it, so I had to do something else.