by Eleri Stone
She was on fire and this much magic...it could very well burn her to ash.
* * *
Christian wheeled his horse and surged forward, running down one demon while his sword slashed into another. Sloppy. He missed the neck and the thing flopped on the ground, dragging its nearly severed arm in the dirt as it tried to escape. It didn’t get very far. Ben was there in an instant, pouncing on the creature and ripping out its throat in a single fluid movement, rolling off the body with the momentum of his attack. Dead leaves kicked up in a dervish then drifted gently to the ground. One caught on Ben’s ear and he shook it loose before trotting back into the shadows.
Christian gave a short nod and bent in the saddle to cut through the spinal cord of the trampled demon now trying to rise to its feet. His Skimstrok blade glowed faintly, sharper than steel. With the power seeping over from Asgard tonight, feeding the runes carved into the precious metal, it would cut through solid flesh and bone like butter.
This was hardly battle. Only the lowest level of demons swarmed from the split Lois was trying to seal. Slavering, barely intelligent creatures of instinct and fury. This was the fourth time this month he’d been called to hunt and he was sick of it. He swiped his forearm across his forehead and glanced around. Lois seemed to have gotten control of the portal and was wrestling it closed. No more demons were coming across, at least for now, and there were only about a dozen left. Maybe an hour’s work, then he could go find Raquel and ask her to explain what the hell Fen was talking about.
He was looking directly at Lois when she suddenly grabbed her head in both hands and let out a piercing scream. Her eyes flashed with a blinding white light for an instant before going black, and she crumpled to the ground. He pushed his horse forward, shouting for help, but it would be too late. Lois had been standing almost directly on the fault when she fell and even now he could feel the split widening again. As he watched, a demon emerged from the portal and Christian knew he wouldn’t make it in time to save her.
A flash of black fur flew over Lois’s limp body and slammed into the demon with an impact Christian could hear above the sounds of the fight. The pair rolled once, twice, and the hound came out on top. He dipped his head, fangs bared, and tore out the thing’s throat. Skidding to a stop, Christian threw himself off his horse to gather up Lois.
He felt another demon cross before he saw it loom up and swat the hound away with its great clawed hand. The hound yelped in pain and the pack responded instantly, converging on the threat. Aiden was there too, cutting his way through a pair of demons and facing down another larger one that forced his way through the failing portal.
Christian tried to rouse Lois. She moaned faintly but didn’t look good. In the dark, illuminated by the glow from his blade, she appeared ghostly pale. Her eyes were slit, but he could only see whites. Her breath came in pained pants. The demon had never reached her. He’d seen it happen...
“What’s wrong with her?” Aiden stood above him coated in drying demon blood, guarding Christian’s back.
“I don’t—” he began, but broke off when Lois stirred.
“Raquel,” she whispered, eyes snapping open to focus on him. Panic and pain swirled in their depths. “You have to stop her. She’ll split open the fault if she doesn’t stop. Kill her if she can’t pull it back.”
Christian shook his head and opened his mouth to argue or at least demand more information, but she was fading again.
“Give her to me. I’ll take Lois back to the house and find Raquel,” Aiden said.
Aiden would kill Raquel if it was between her and the clan. Christian stood, hefting Lois into his arms. “I’ll do it.”
Aiden paused as if he might argue but then gave a short nod. “Call Kathy on your way. She’ll come. Tell Grace we need everyone ready to evacuate. She knows the emergency plan.”
Christian turned from the fight, taking one last glimpse with him—the icy threat in Aiden’s eyes and the hounds guarding their fallen brother. He wouldn’t kill Raquel. It wouldn’t come to that.
He left Lois at Aiden’s house with Grace, who was already on the phone with Kathy when he left. By the time he climbed into his car and tore out of the driveway heading for town, he’d had time to consider Lois’s words. If Raquel had somehow caused the rift and Lois so much pain from a distance, what state was she in now?
It took less than five minutes for him to arrive at her house, but he tried calling Audrey on the way. He got voice mail twice and tossed his phone onto the seat with a curse. She’d mentioned something about going shopping with her mom. They were planning a bridal shower for Raquel in a few days. They’d already had one back in Colorado but thought this would be a nice way for her to get to know more people from the community. It was a surprise, which meant Raquel would be alone tonight.
What the hell had she done?
The house was dark when he threw the car into park. Taking the stairs two at a time, he walked into the house without knocking and paused inside the door. The house was far too quiet, but there was something strange...a throbbing sensation like he sometimes felt when standing directly above the fault. He wasn’t particularly sensitive to magic so if he could feel it pressing on him here, like a weight against his skin, something was very wrong. Instinctively, he reached for his sword, but he’d left it in the sheath attached to Skadi’s saddle.
“Raquel?”
No answer. Quickly, he passed down the hall to her bedroom. The light was on and she was curled in a ball on the floor. No blood. Her leg twitched as he stood frozen in the door—she was still alive. She’d created a warded circle and it made him pause for a moment. He didn’t know if she’d meant to keep something in or out, but either way, he couldn’t wait. He broke it, stepping across the invisible line. Like crossing to Asgard, the same cobweb feeling on his skin iced his blood. Nothing exploded or attacked and he didn’t waste any more time worrying about what he might have loosed by breaking that circle.
Raquel...he crouched beside her, almost afraid to touch her. The magic was stronger inside the circle and seemed to be coming directly from her. As gently as he could manage it, he turned her rigid body. Her eyes were open but blind and unfocused. She breathed in tight gasps and seemed to be having some sort of a seizure.
“Raquel. Come on, baby. Snap out of it.”
She wasn’t blinking. Her mouth moved, forming words, but no sound came out. He slapped her face. Nothing. He considered trying to knock her out, wondering if rendering her unconscious would break the magic’s hold on her. Aiden would kill her to keep the clan safe. Aiden was a good man, but for him the clan always came first.
Christian could smell burnt flesh, possibly hair. He knew that was often an ingredient in Lois’s spells. But it didn’t... His gaze swept over Raquel’s body and caught on the burnt patch on her leg. Her nightgown covered most of her thigh but when he shoved the fabric aside, he saw the runes. Fen’s sketchbook was pinned beneath her leg and a marker had rolled halfway across the room.
But Crayola sure as hell hadn’t done that to her leg.
The burns were still smoking as if they’d been etched into her skin with acid. Her leg twitched again, and she moaned.
He grabbed the damp washcloth and pressed it to the wound. A door crashed open from the rear of the house and he yelled, “In here.”
Hopefully, it was someone who knew what needed to be done because he sure as hell hadn’t a clue. Digging his phone out of his pocket, he hit Grace’s number. She answered as the door behind him opened.
He glanced back. Only Julian. The teenage boy lived across the street and had some magical ability. He’d have felt the disturbance. His eyes were red rimmed, the pupils contracted to tiny specks. He seemed to be having a mild but similar reaction to Lois’s.
“Hello?”
Christian turned his head. “Raquel is causing this, but I don’t know how to stop it. She’s having some sort of seizure and she’s not responding—”
Julian broke thro
ugh the circle before Christian thought to warn him. A shudder passed through his skinny body and he dropped to his knees. Christian didn’t have time to stop him, didn’t even see the knife in Julian’s hand until it was on the down stroke inches from Raquel’s heart. By then it was too late.
Dropping the phone, he tackled Julian to the ground, both of them landing across Raquel’s legs. He rolled, dragging the boy with him and pinning his shoulders to the carpet. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Julian was shaking, skin cold to the touch. “Had to stop it.”
“Stay down,” Christian growled, positioning himself so he could examine Raquel and still keep an eye on the boy. He’d missed the heart, thank God. The strike had gone wide and hit her rib, leaving a bloody gash in her side. The knife was imbedded in the meaty flesh of her shoulder.
“Christian.” His eyes flicked up. Raquel was staring at him, her gaze aware, focused on him and tight with pain. “Oh, God. What happened?”
“Stay still.” He fumbled for his phone. The blood on his fingers made him nearly drop it on the floor. He hit dial and held it to his ear.
Raquel tried to get up. “The fault, I can feel it unraveling. You have to take me there.”
“You have a knife in your chest.” He pushed her back down as Grace answered. “I need Alan. Now.”
* * *
Raquel closed her eyes. She’d fucked up bad. The runes had worked spectacularly well. Tapping into her power wasn’t like turning a spigot, it was like taking a sledgehammer to it. It had settled down somewhat, but the wall was gone. For good she imagined. She’d flooded power into the unstable portal though, and now...she could feel it, unraveling at the seam, drawing further and further apart with every breath.
If she could get to the fault line, she might be able to fix this. No. She would fix this. She had to. Christian hung up the phone and looked down at her. “Alan will be here in a minute.”
His expression was hard. There was anger there and fear, which was only to be expected considering the fact that she was single-handedly destroying his town. The concern surprised her.
“I did this. I’m so sorry.”
He nodded but brushed the hair from her face. “We’ll talk about it later.”
There was a knife in her chest. She could see the hilt sticking out, feel the coldness of it in her bones along with a razor-edged pain.
“Julian did that,” Christian said, eyes flicking to a spot behind her. She’d have to crane her neck to see. “You were in some sort of trance.”
She remembered spinning out of control and then all of her power contracting back to face a sudden threat. It was what had let her get the upper hand in that terrible struggle. Pain was a powerful focus. “Thank you, Julian.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you, Raquel.” She heard tears in the boy’s voice.
“You did what you had to do. You saved everyone. A few more minutes and the fault might have ruptured.”
Christian paled, but it wasn’t much of an exaggeration. Even now, with her power contained, the fault was dangerously unstable. “You did good, Julian.”
She must have blacked out for a second or two because the next thing she knew, Alan hovered over her, arguing with Kathy. Quite possibly she was hallucinating.
“Kathy?”
Kathy turned her head. “I came as soon as Grace called.” She frowned. “You broke through your block and nearly tore a hole between worlds.”
“Get me to the fault and I’ll fix it.”
Kathy nodded. “I’ll get you there.”
Alan let out an exasperated sigh. “Two minutes and I can stop the bleeding. We’ll repair the muscle and nerve damage later. That’s the best I can do.”
Christian nodded tightly at the doctor and held Raquel while they withdrew the knife. Heat flooded onto her chest and burned down her arm. Alan pressed his hand to her forehead and Raquel heard his voice whispering inside her head. When she opened her eyes again, they were in a truck and she was propped up against Kathy, whose arm was locked across her chest. It was a bumpy road and every rut they hit jolted through her like an electric shock.
“We’re almost there. We’re driving in as far as we can.”
Kind of them to spare her the horse. The truck shuddered, bucked twice and then stalled. Magic had that effect on mechanics sometimes. Christian swore loudly and then she heard him on his phone. “We’re at the edge of the north field where you butt up against Richter’s land. Yeah. She says she can do it.” A pause. “Hurry then.”
The door beside her opened and Christian was there, grunting as he hefted her into his arms. “You sure you’re up for this?”
She had to be. “Yes.”
But she needn’t have bothered answering. He was already walking across the field toward the fault, his long strides eating up the ground. There was a mess of stars tonight. She could pick out the Northern Cross and Orion’s Belt without even trying. Christian’s boots crunched over the frosted earth and blended in with the staccato beat of an approaching horse.
“She’s injured?” Aiden—the man who would likely kill her for destroying his town when this was through. Justifiably so.
“Alan stopped the bleeding. She’s lost a good deal of blood, but she’s conscious.”
Aiden settled her across his lap and gave her a skeptical look. “The block?”
“Gone.”
And they were off. He went for speed rather than comfort and it was all she could do to hold on. He might be the Odin, but his horse was no Sleipnir flying through the air. Hooves hit the packed earth with magnificent enthusiasm that pounded through her body with every step. She clung to Aiden’s shirt and didn’t look up until she felt the fault. A bloody rip in the fabric of space. It never felt pretty, like a new scar, sealed but vulnerable. Now it was a raw and open wound oozing magic into the night. And surrounded by demons. She felt their magic too. Heard the snarls of the hounds as they slaughtered the ones brave enough to cross through. Her eyes sought Fen and found him almost immediately. She couldn’t say how she knew which hound was him, she simply knew. Some of the tension eased in her chest. Seeing him there, crouched and snarling over his injured pack mate, gave her the courage to look at the damage she’d done to the portal.
Aiden drew his sword. “How close do you need to be?”
She glanced around and pointed near a tree, slightly raised and less than dozen feet from the open portal. He trampled a demon to get her there and then lowered her to the earth.
“I’ll stand guard,” he snapped. “Make it quick.”
She’d done this. Her gaze swept the small clearing littered with the bodies of demons. Moonlight cut through the trees, casting shifting patterns of silver and black. About a half-dozen demons still lived, blood burning red beneath slick gray skin. The hounds had them cornered to the fault, the huntsmen stood behind the hounds in case any slipped through their circle, swords at the ready. The men and women of the hunt looked exhausted. Some of them were wounded but still sat in their saddles. All of them were covered in gore and blood. They wore old armor of leather and chain and their Skimstrok blades reacted to the magic in the air, glowing with a soft blue light.
A surge usually meant a handful of demons, not dozens. Kathy had brought her to watch their hunt in action. She’d always said that a witch needed to understand the sacred trust placed in her by the clan. The magic was their first line of defense. Monitoring the faults to be sure that enough magic seeped through from their home planet to enable them to survive here. Ensuring that the fault didn’t open enough to allow the demons the opportunity to cross freely. The hunt was the second line of protection, their work minimal with a stable fault. Raquel had not only failed these people horribly, she’d actively sabotaged by them by not being able to control her gift and taking a risk she’d stupidly thought would only affect her.
She’d screwed up badly.
Shame filled her but she choked it down, trying to focus on the task at hand. She blocked
out the snarls of the demons and hounds, the pain radiating from her shoulder, the ache in her limp and useless arm to focus on the fault itself.
The wards they’d been so worried about had held through the chaos and were only now beginning to falter. The fault was a slit in space. The ancients had called these fleeting connections between the worlds bridges and could open and close them at will. The descendants of the Æsir who’d fled Asgard were not as powerful, weakened by the lack of magic here or their interbreeding with the human population. Whatever the cause, Æsir nowadays could only open portals at the weak spots in the fabric of space such as the one that ran through this land.
Their presence weakened the fault, allowing these portals to open spontaneously during the times when the walls between the worlds were the weakest, at new and full moon, particularly in the days nearest the spring and fall equinox. That was when the demons pushed through, hunting Æsir blood as they’d been ensorcelled to do by the Vanir. She needed to close this portal but not seal it so completely that they lost their connection to their world. It was a delicate balance and absolutely crucial to their survival.
Power flowed from the portal like blood from a freshly opened wound, and she gathered it, absorbing the overflow as she wrestled the ragged edges of the split closer and closer together. The runes on her leg burned and she could feel her body trembling, shaking as it had earlier when the magic overwhelmed her. It was theoretically possible to poison yourself this way. She’d learned that from the old scrolls Kathy had forced her to translate and study. The ones locked with the prophecies and artifacts in the clan vaults.
No one in recent memory possessed enough power to make it even a remote likelihood. She didn’t possess that kind of power, not of herself. But she was an open circuit now, connected to the fault. If she didn’t maintain absolute control, she would burn out, destroy not only her mind but her body as well.