by Robin Moray
Cordelia hesitated. She was a city witch, or had been before she went bad, Kevin could tell. City witches were a bit funny about nature, always trying to commune with it, as if it was any different out under the stars in a field than it was in a rose garden. They obsessed over phases of the moon and planting and making ties to the earth. But ties to the earth took blood, and dedication, and love, and Mallory witches had been here for a long time trying to protect this place. There were ties, they were real, but Kevin was banking on her thinking them a lot more powerful than they actually were.
She tilted her head to one side, watching him like a particularly disturbing bird. "Should we find out?"
* * *
Peter realized about halfway to his goal that he didn't actually have a plan. He'd tried to circle around behind her, with the intention of … what? His taser was in his coat, which was in the back room of the Mallory bookshop. He never used the knives, had never liked them, liked even less the idea of stabbing a woman, even a warlock. He hadn't planned this, not at all. Mercy, he hadn't planned anything, not since the moment he found Miranda's body in that warehouse, had focussed solely on revenge. And now?
I'm going to get Kevin killed, he thought, heart juddering. Even though he insists on helping, it will be all my fault. Kevin, you brave, reckless fool!
And he was brave, standing there in the open, chatting to Cordelia as if he hadn't a care in the world. Lord have mercy, if she turned on him—but Peter couldn't let that happen. He would simply have to take his chances.
He crept up as close as he dared, barely two yards from her, gathering his nerve.
This might be it. Even if he were successful the strength of her magic, of her coven and however much of the second coven she had consumed, would tear through him like white phosphorous. But he had to. He'd promised Miranda. He'd always known he owed Miranda his life, after all, though until now he really hadn't had any reason to hold on to it.
Maybe he hesitated then, maybe he faltered. When he reached out maybe he wavered, just for a moment. He latched on to her and pulled, felt the glamour Kevin had cast on him shiver into nothing, felt the whip of Cordelia's magic bear hard and hot down his nerves, searing him even as he vented it uselessly into the earth.
But she turned, her mouth wide and full of teeth. "There you are." And her magic hit him like a fist.
* * *
Kevin saw Peter flicker into view, saw the rush of magic like a sink draining, saw Cordelia turn, and he heard himself yell, though it wasn't as though he yelled anything useful.
He saw Cordelia swat Peter away like he was nothing, and he thought, No, that's not how it goes. It couldn't be.
Peter fell against a raised tomb, crumpled down at the foot of it as though he were dead, and Kevin thought he might have actually felt his own heart break.
Cordelia dusted off her hands, turning back to Kevin. "So, you told him then, little witch? I'm surprised he didn't stab you in the back." She picked her way across the uneven ground, walking boldly across the graves. "They're unreasonable, hunters. His woman was a bitch and a half. Before I killed her."
Kevin tried not to panic and mostly failed. "Yeah? Never met her."
"She kept hounding me," Cordelia said, sounding put-out. "Followed me half-way across the state. Then he did the same. And for what?"
Kevin paused, because … what? "You eat people. That's what."
"They're not people," she scoffed, and she sounded so certain.
"What do you mean?" Kevin backed up, stumbling over a grave border. "They damn well were."
"You mean the little street-rats? They attacked me first." She spread her hands, and if she was trying for innocence she missed it by about a mile. "Just for the crime of lingering in their territory."
Maybe it was true, even, but Kevin didn't know and he didn't really care. "So, what? You hunted them down?"
"I didn't have to hunt the first one; she practically fell in my lap. The second one got as far as your idyllic little village before I caught her. And it really is idyllic." She smiled, thin and cruel. She must have been beautiful once, Kevin thought. She still could be, if it weren't for the rotten magic seeping through her skin. "I can see what you mean about your ancestors. You … Mallorys? have carved out quite a nice little niche here. I suppose the rest of your coven are Mallorys too. And I suppose they have a spare, just in case." Her eyebrows went up, as if she was really expecting an answer. "So it won't cripple them, if I kill you."
Why was she still talking? Why hadn't she done anything? He forced himself to think and then he wondered. Was she trying to keep him talking? But what for? She could flatten him like a bug, like she did with Peter. Unless his bluff had worked and she really didn't want to attack him in the cemetery. Maybe …
Kevin took a breath. "What about your coven? I suppose they weren't people either."
"You have no idea."
But he did, actually, because—"They trusted you. They linked with you. They let you in their heads. How could you hurt them, after that?" Didn't you love them?
"Because they hurt me," she snarled, and the resonance of magic in it was enough to force Kevin back a step. His heel hit stone; he was backed up against a sarcophagus. That was probably very bad. Cordelia didn't seem to notice, just moved steadily through the headstones toward him. "They knew I'd find out, but they did it anyway. They didn't care about me. All they cared about was each other."
Kevin shook his head, sidling along the edge of the sarcophagus, not daring to look away from her. "I don't understand."
"It was only a matter of time after that. They started, and then," and her face wrenched with fury, magic billowing up in her like smoke, "they would have shut me out. There would have been a baby. They wouldn't have needed me anymore. Do you know what that feels like?"
And suddenly it made sense. Kevin stared at her, horrified but maybe understanding. "They hooked up. Your coven … the other two got together and you were jealous?" But … no, that was all wrong. "You should have been happy for them. They were your fucking family!"
"They betrayed me!" The burr beneath her voice turned to sawblades, and the corruption in it was sickening. "They didn't need me. So I made sure I didn't need them."
It was somehow worse to know she didn't do it just for the power. At least that seemed somehow sane.
"Your coven doesn't need you either, do they?"
Kevin felt her look into him then, seeing him all the way down to his bones, and he couldn't hide the truth. "What do you care?"
She was close, now, only a few yards away. She held out a hand. "You can have him. The last one. I'll show you how. And you'll never need them again."
Kevin couldn't hide his revulsion, either. "God, no."
"Don't be stubborn," she snapped, and she sounded too much like Artemis—Kevin couldn't bear it.
"Go fuck yourself!"
Her eyes lit, magic tumbling down her cheeks in a dark haze, and Kevin opened himself wide, tapping the cemetery and bracing himself for the rush of power. It nearly knocked him off his feet all the same, more than he'd ever handled alone, but it was comforting and familiar and, this is Mallory magic, he thought, as time slowed to a crawl, I can do this, one time, this one thing.
Just a shield, that's all he had, and even if he managed it, he couldn't shield himself and Peter. If Peter was still alive. If there was even any point.
Despair coursed through him, souring his magic til his teeth ached, but then the magic just writhed, sparking like an inspiration. Yes.
He lifted a hand, fingers splayed, and let the magic snap into a smooth shiny sphere, harder than obsidian, stronger than steel, cutting off everything but sound and light.
With Cordelia inside.
She stared at him through the shimmering surface of it, and then she frowned. "What—" But when she stabbed magic against the inside of the shield and it held her frown turned into a rictus. "What are you doing?"
Kevin didn't answer. It took all his concentr
ation to hold on, to not be swept away in the torrent of magic streaming through him. Cordelia's blows slammed up against it, growing sharper, more focussed. He struggled to close off her access to magic but she managed to slowly drag it through the barrier, gathering it to strike over and over, looking for a point of weakness.
He wouldn't be able to hold it long, he knew that, no matter how much magic he pulled from the cemetery. He only had so much strength, could only hold out so long, and he could feel the flashover burning on his skin, the hot smell of singed hair stinging his nose. It was no good. Any moment now—
The heavy scent of orange-flower bloomed around him and—thank God—he'd know that magic anywhere. He held the shield steady, diverted a little of himself to reach out and link with her. Bella, thank-you, thank-you, I love you.
It was like grasping a firecracker. The shock of it made somebody scream, maybe him, he couldn't be sure. The connection shattered, taking his shield with it, and the unused magic pouring through him flared-off in a smash of lightning that knocked Cordelia to the ground and drove Kevin to his knees.
"Kevin!"
Artemis skidded along the gravel footpath, magic already radiating out in a complex pattern; he had something shiny in one hand and a mess of coloured string in the other, and he vaulted over a headstone only to thud painfully into Kevin's side when he landed.
He grabbed for Kevin's hand, his magic furling around, but there was no connection; it was like trying to push magnets together at the wrong ends, they just refused to go.
Because Kevin's magic wasn't a match any more. Because he'd aligned with Peter and … and ruined everything.
I'm sorry, he thought, through the haze of disorientation in his head. Artie, forgive me.
And then he didn't have time to think, because Cordelia was standing up, magic condensing around her like a shroud.
"So you're no use to them, anyway," she said, blood in her mouth making her teeth glisten horribly. "Then I guess I'm doing them a favour."
And she struck.
* * *
There was nothing, and then something, and the something was cool and fresh and green like chewing parsley. Peter became slowly aware that he was lying on his side, with the morning sun streaming down into his eyes, and something digging into his ribs. That something ought to be painful, only it wasn't, just present, and he was all-over comfortably numb.
He blinked, shifted, but there was a hand on his arm that squeezed to hold him still.
He looked. The eyes that looked back were dark and wary, black-lashed, unfamiliar and yet he knew them.
The witch. He must have startled because the witch put a finger to his own mouth, glancing up over Peter's shoulder. He shook his head very slightly.
Peter realized that it was perfectly quiet. Not just quiet, silent. And that he was lying half-curled around something hard and made of concrete, with rocks and gravel under his hands.
Cemetery. Cordelia. Kevin.
The witch made a frustrated face, gripping Peter's arm tighter. He was crouched down behind the corner of the tomb, hidden in the shade, and he hunched even lower now, leaching cold, tangy magic directly into Peter's skin. It was like being rubbed all over with aloe vera, soothing and pleasant, and Peter realized that the witch was healing him.
Why would you do that? he thought. What have I ever done to help you?
The witch was younger than he remembered, with unruly black hair and a sullen pout, fear tightening around his eyes. There was a piercing on one side of his lip; it looked painful to Peter, and as he watched the boy caught it in his teeth, chewing it nervously. Lord almighty, he was just a child. How did he come to look so knowing? Why was he still wearing the same torn shirt he'd had in the Stone Garden? Where were his parents?
Why is he healing me?
The witch gave him a stubborn look, and then nodded, taking his hand away. The moment the contact was broken the witch vanished, all the sound in the world rushing back into Peter's ears, overwhelming, and all the aches and pains of his abused body came with it. He swallowed a gasp, squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, and corrected himself; not all. It must have been worse before the witch … did what he had no obligation to do.
"Thank-you," he whispered, hoping the boy heard him, and then he raised his head cautiously to look over his shoulder.
There wasn't much to see, too many gravestones obscuring the view. Peter rolled carefully onto his side, pushed himself up against the side of the tomb, and then he crabbed forward, seeking a line-of-sight, because he could feel magic condensing and exploding in the air but he could see nothing and his heart clenched with anxiety and fear.
He caught a glimpse of a figure to his right, a young woman as darkly beautiful as Kevin with his same curls and his same stubborn jaw, and Peter knew first that she must be Kevin's relative and second that she was one of Kevin's coven. He had never felt so glad to see a witch in his life, and it made him—no, not now, he would consider it later, if indeed there was a later.
For now Peter crept forward, acutely aware that the woman was at the heart of a tempest of magic, and that she was three times over as powerful as any witch Peter had ever had the opportunity to gauge before. She had not noticed him, it seemed, so he persisted, until Cordelia loomed into view.
She seemed caught, suspended up on her toes, threads of magic spooling out across the churchyard to bind her still—with Kevin's magic still pooled low in his belly Peter could almost see the threads shimmer in the air. They wound from the woman-who-must-be-Kevin's-relative around Cordelia and out to a slim man with the same rich colouring who could only be another relative, and suddenly it made sense. Kevin, so unexceptionally magical, so reluctantly but unmistakably a witch, from a family of witches that he loved so fiercely he followed a witch-hunter into the woods alone to protect them.
The two other Mallorys were linked, their magic amplified into a hurricane, but Kevin, sprawled on his hands and knees at his brother's feet was not. Peter would have felt it, he was sure, but no, Kevin only watched, his face a mask of bitter, guilty anguish and Peter, oh, how the understanding smote him. That's my fault. I did that to him. I turned his magic toward me and now he cannot. Without him it could not be enough. Peter could see how Cordelia struggled, how she resisted, and he knew: they were only two, while Cordelia had all of a coven inside her. There was no way that two witches alone could overpower a full coven, even one consumed and perverted as this one had been.
Just as one hunter could not overpower a coven. Not and survive it.
But Peter didn't need to survive it.
This time he struck without hesitation, sinking threads of his self into her like fangs; he heard her scream and he did not falter. Then, he shoved himself up off the ground, staggered over a grave—Please, sir, forgive me,—and threw himself at her, latching onto her like a leech, digging his fingers into her arms and holding her while he drained everything he could, from the air, from her flesh, everything.
How it hurt. And how much more it would have hurt, he wondered, if the witch boy had not numbed him first. Perhaps that is what he intended, he thought, though not bitterly. Perhaps I was meant as a sacrifice. And perhaps it was instead only a kindness, one I have not earned.
Still, it would not be enough. Cordelia thrashed, her high, crazed shrieks of protest echoing in a dozen discordant notes that dragged like jagged nails down his bones, and all he could do was hold on, draw her in, try not to be swept away in the deluge too soon, not yet, not until it was done, Just hold on …
Time slowed, lumbering, like wading through treacle. Peter lost track of it, lost track of himself, aware only that he must hold on, that he must not fail, that he, that she, that Miranda, and … and he had forgotten something important, something vital, but if he could only hold on then it would not matter. Nothing mattered but that.
He felt seared, raw, ruined, as though his flesh was stripped away, his bones char, his soul corroded, and there would soon be nothing left, not even
a memory of a man, just this One Thing, a single act, unremembered.
I exist, he thought, and then he wondered who it was that thought it. What is this?
And then, the warm, comforting familiarity of something he had forgotten, wrapping around him in an embrace as strong and sure and welcoming as oblivion, only … only fierce and determined and desperate and he knew this
He didn't know what it meant, only that it was.
Whatever it was it gave him strength, buoyed him up, carried him back into the unwanted shell of himself and—oh, that's right. He held on, and this time the pain and the weight was ameliorated, shared, pouring through them both. Two, to carry to burden. The way it was meant to be.
They held on, until there was a pressure beneath his palms, strong big-knuckled fingers prying him away.
"It's okay, just … let go."
He trusted that voice, so he did as he was told, released the connection, leaning into the chest at his back suddenly too exhausted to stand.
"Kevin?"
"Yeah." Kevin sounded hoarse, as though—had he been weeping? "I've got you. You're okay. I—shit, Peter, I've got you."
Peter let himself be supported because he could not fight it, could barely summon the strength to open his eyes, and at first it was too bright for him to see. Then, when he could see, he did not understand it, in any case.
There were three of them, three wound together, a circle of magic centred on something large becoming something small, something bright, something that could fit in a palm.
It snapped shut. The magic went out. Peter knew it was done. So, gratefully, he collapsed into the comforting embrace of unconsciousness.