by A. J. Menden
“That’s because . . .” But the words stuck in my mouth and just wouldn’t come out, despite how much I felt them.
“Because why?”
“Because you’re a better person than me,” I finished lamely.
He spasmed again and started mumbling more binary. I held on tight, shutting my eyes, hoping against hope that the hex would stop itself. Mentally I tried to reach out to my father, to call him back here. Surely he would have an idea of something to do to save Cyrus. Less magically gifted than I, faulty memory or not, he was our best chance.
Cyrus finished twitching, and he grabbed hold of my arm hard. Startled, I glanced down.
“Quick. Before it hits again, we’ve got to do something.”
“Like what?”
“You’ve got to help me to be able to concentrate hard enough to try to hack this spell. Sorcery. Hex. Whatever it is.”
“Hack it? What are you talking about?”
“I want to do what I was originally trying: trace it back to its roots so we can find the source of this mess. It’s Dylan, or whoever’s controlling him.”
“That’s how you ended up like this in the first place!” I said.
“That’s right. And now the hex is inside of me. If you can help me clear my head, maybe hold the hex at bay for a few moments, I think I can follow the line of it back from inside me to wherever it’s coming from.”
“I’d have to connect my mind to yours.”
“That’s probably true.”
“The hex could jump from your mind into mine.”
He nodded. “It could. And it might just kill you. Isn’t that what you said you wanted?”
I actually felt a chill. “That’s not funny.”
“I never thought it was.”
His words dug into me. I hated to admit it, but he was right. If I really did crave death, as I said, why was I scared when he mentioned it?
I spoke carefully, making sure I understood what he wanted. “So, you think if I link my mind to yours and help you hold back the hex, you might be able to trace it and tell me where it’s coming from so we can go permanently stop whoever’s running it?”
“That’s the plan,” he said. He gave me a weak smile.
“And if it doesn’t work?”
“It doesn’t work.”
“Metaphysically poking around at this thing might just make it worse.”
“It might,” he agreed.
“It could kill you,” I said, shivering.
“It might. But before it does, I might be able to get the right information for the Elite Hands of Justice to stop this thing. So it’d be worth it.”
“But you’d be dead!” I said.
“So?” he asked.
I felt my eyes tear up. “Stop it. You know I would care.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because I would,” I snapped. “Because I . . .” I trailed off.
“Because you what?”
“Because I care, okay? Isn’t that enough?”
He sighed. “No, it’s not, but I’ll take it. We don’t have time to hash this out anymore. I can feel it coming back.”
I took a deep breath and put a hand on either side of his head, resting fingers on his temples. “I don’t know that this is going to work,” I muttered.
“It’s our only hope,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
He started speaking in binary again. I closed my eyes and started to work my own spell.
“Unisci la mia mente alla tua,” I said, and began to feel the magic take effect. The spell made us able to communicate telepathically. I couldn’t wander around in his mind, but he put me where he wanted me to be.
Cyrus’s mind immediately opened to where the virus lay quivering inside him. Before I could see it, I felt its darkness. The hex was like an icicle driven into my stomach, an unearthly coldness, a sense of something horribly wrong and evil.
The dark malevolence inside him, this pulsing sorcery, turned its attention to me. It reached out a tentacle of darkness, but I mentally pushed it away. I directed myself to fight the thing, my tongue spitting out a constant barrage of Italian, much like Cyrus’s binary code, as I pushed as hard as I could against the hex. It barely budged. Not to be outdone, I gritted my teeth and pushed again, throwing more of myself into it. I felt the spell give a bit more, and I quickly spat out a few more incantations to further cement my intention: to create a temporary door in Cyrus’s mind that would slow the evil’s progress.
The hex, for lack of a better term, growled. I slammed a sorcerous door in its face and threw myself against it, holding fast even as it tried to break through.
“Now,” I growled to Cyrus, both physically and mentally. “Do it fast, whatever you plan on doing!”
I felt a difference as soon as he stopped working in his own defense; it seemed like my mental barricade was already giving way. Knowing I couldn’t fail, I braced myself and held on as tightly as I could.
“I’m almost there,” Cyrus whispered, though I couldn’t tell if it was in my mind or aloud. “I can almost reach it.”
My defense was giving way. I felt the coldness of a tentacle from the hex reach out for me. I swatted it away but said, “This isn’t going to last much longer.”
“Almost there . . . Almost there . . . I’ve got it!” he crowed, and for a moment I caught a glimpse of a building I didn’t recognize and someplace beautiful and otherworldly. And then my door holding back the black magic burst open and the hex lurched forward.
I dropped the mind-linking spell between me and Cyrus. As the connection ended, so did the hex’s attempt to make the leap into my mind. I fell physically backward, bouncing my head off the floor. The jolt was enough to jar me, and my eyes flew open, just as I heard the sound of something breaking on the ground next to me. I winced at the pain from both the fall and working the spell.
“Ow,” I groaned, struggling to sit up. But then a wild-eyed Cyrus was atop me.
“You can’t forget memory. It can’t be done!” he said, his voice pitched weirdly and not entirely his own. I wasn’t sure what messing with his hex had done, but it definitely wasn’t good. His eyes were dead, like Cyrus himself was gone and something else was working the shell of his flesh.
“Cyrus,” I said, hesitant.
“It’s not so hidden anymore. It’s coming up more and more to the surface. And it will again, once he’s set free.” Something continued to speak in that strange, almost singsong voice. I didn’t know what was talking, but it wasn’t Cyrus.
“Set the Dragon free, you mean?” I asked.
“Serpents be lowly. They hug the ground on their bellies. The Brethren are above everything.” The voice changed again, became a growl. Cyrus’s eyes seemed to see again, but it was still someone else behind them. “Bet you wished you were nicer to me now, huh, Fantazia?”
“Dylan?” There was something about the tone and speech pattern that was recognizable.
“Am I man enough now for you?” He used Cyrus’s hands to grope my body.
I struggled. “Stop it. Let Cyrus go!” I demanded.
“He touched us. We touched him,” the strange voice said again.
“I own him now,” Dylan said. “He shouldn’t have tried to find us. He should have known that if he could reach us, we could reach him. I’m inside him now, beautiful.”
One of Cyrus’s hands closed around my throat, and the other felt around the carpet for the shattered remains of a glass picture frame that had gotten knocked off the wall. “I’ll cut your head off,” Dylan’s voice said.
I struggled against him, trying to break free even as the darkness threatened to swallow me whole and stars danced before my eyes. There seemed a real possibility that I could die, and I didn’t want it. I magically lashed out as I felt my strength starting to give. I’d used up way too much magic and didn’t have enough oxygen to think straight.
Suddenly, Cyrus let go. I gasped for air, my lungs sucking in as much as I could take.
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“They let go,” he said, clearly amazed. When I met his eyes I could see that he was back. “At least temporarily.”
“We’ve got to somehow make sure they can’t take you over again.”
“I’m not going to be the one who kills you, Fantazia. I’m not,” Cyrus commanded. “If that happens again, you have to stop me. One way or another, you’ve got to stop me. You’re the only one strong enough to do it.”
“Are you saying you want me to kill you?” I asked, horrified.
“If that’s what it takes to permanently stop them from controlling my body, yes. Just do it quick, because I can feel them coming back.”
“I’m not . . .” I felt tears run down my face. “No. You can’t ask me that!”
“Now’s the time to remind yourself that you don’t care about anyone. That you didn’t mean what you said the other night, what you said in another language. The other night never even happened, if that helps. I don’t care what you have to say to make yourself stop me, just stop me,” he begged, his eyes wide with panic. “Please do it.”
“No!” I shrieked.
He grabbed me by the arms, squeezing tight enough to leave bruises. An expression of agony took over his face and he let go, but then he was looking away from me, at something I couldn’t see. “Oh, God, it’s ripping through me. I can’t . . . I can’t . . .” He wasn’t even seeing me anymore. Zeroes and ones spilled from his mouth like a sermon.
I covered my ears and squeezed my eyes tightly shut, finally summoning the only words that would stop him. I loved him this much, no matter what I was unable to say. He’d begged me to do this; I had to do something.
The room went silent. I slowly opened one eye. Cyrus lay on the floor, staring at nothing.
My whole body was racked by a sob. Against all hope, I called out for the one person who could help.
“DADDY!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A flash of light seared the room and Wesley appeared, clearly having teleported in from DC. He gave a swift glance around, his eyes burning a bright blue. “What is it? What’s happened?”
I threw myself into his arms and sobbed, clinging to him like a hurt child. His whole body stiffened, like he was in shock, but then he relaxed. Some ancient fatherly instinct must have kicked in. He stroked my hair and leaned his head against mine.
“Shh. It’s okay. Va tutto benne.”
I cried even harder at hearing him tell me everything was all right. All the emotion that had been stuck inside me for so long seemed set on coming out in the face of this tragedy.
“Sweetheart, what’s happened? What is it?”
With one shaky hand, I pointed to the floor and burst into a fresh batch of tears.
Wesley followed my finger and gasped when he saw Cyrus lying there. “What happened? What have you done to him?” He left my side to check Cyrus. For once, I didn’t mind not being the focus of attention.
“Was the Dragon here?” he asked. He waved a hand over Cyrus and cast a small diagnostic spell.
I shook my head. “Not physically, anyway. Cyrus was trying to hack into the source of that spell Dylan used on the civilians, or at least what he assumed was the source. He was using what he thought was the prototype spell. But . . . it’s not a spell. It’s a hex.” I quickly explained the sequence of events just past, then ended the synopsis with a shaky breath. “I can’t do this anymore. I am so tired.”
“What are you tired of?”
“Life. It goes on and on and hurts so goddamn much. And it never stops.”
“No, it doesn’t,” he agreed. “And it never will for us.”
“I can’t do it anymore. I want to go away.”
“Where?” he asked.
“Where life can’t reach me anymore. Where I can’t be hurt anymore.”
“There are very few places like that, Fantazia,” he said, “in this world or in any other. Besides, you tried it before. Did it help to be away from everyone?”
“No, I was so lonely,” I sobbed. “But it was better than this. I can’t keep doing this over and over again, caring about someone and then losing them. First with Andrew and then Victor and now . . . God, you don’t know how lucky you are that you get to forget.”
His face darkened. “Oh, yes. I’m blessed. Ask Lainey how much it hurt her to see me walking around not knowing who she was. For me to have suspicions of why she acted like she hated me only to have her confirm it later: that I replaced the man she loved.”
“It worked out for you,” I retorted.
“This time,” he said. “She decided she loves this new me. But I’ll never know how many people left because they couldn’t deal with the pain. And that’s a whole new agony to deal with.”
“It’s better than this,” I said, motioning to Cyrus. “To seeing one of the few people I’ve let myself care about die right before my eyes, then to never forget it. To never forget. Having to deal with that pain again. Forever.”
Wesley studied me. “You . . . care for him?”
“Yes.” The admission was like tearing out my own entrails. “Great, eh? Look what it got me.”
“Love,” Wesley said.
I met his eyes. “What do you mean? The fact that you and I buried the hatchet?”
He shook his head. “No. I meant that he was in love with you.”
My throat felt like it was going to close. “He said that to you?”
Wesley shook his head. “He didn’t have to.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.
“I’ve been trying to figure out if it’s reciprocated.”
“Oh, no. If you want the gory details, Pop—”
“Not like that.” He shook his head, amused and a bit exasperated. “That’s not love. Love isn’t sex—”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“—though sex is like icing on the cake of love.”
I winced. “Wow. You were a poet in one of your lives. Not this one.”
“The very fact that you’re making smart remarks is telling,” Wesley said. “You’re trying to avoid the subject.”
It was true; the discomfort of the situation was getting to me. “So, who’s still around that could work a hex?” I asked, deftly changing the subject.
From the look he shot me, I wasn’t quite as deft as I’d hoped. “Besides you and I?” He quirked an eyebrow and I nodded. “I’m not sure.”
“Is there anything you can do?” I asked, looking over at Cyrus. He was still lying motionless, eyes open and seeing nothing.
My father sighed. “To try to figure out who’s doing all this, to trace the drain spell back and try to put a stop to it, or to help save Cyrus? Which are you asking for?”
I shrugged. I really meant saving Cyrus, but I supposed they were all extremely important.
“The answer to all three is a resounding, ‘I’m not sure.’ ”
“Wow. Not the answer I was looking for,” I muttered.
“That’s all you’re going to get I’m afraid,” he said with a sad little smile. He eyed Cyrus. “I’m impressed, though. It’s not often you see a freeze spell so effective on a human body.”
I gave him a sad smile of my own. “It’s multilayered.”
“How so?”
I didn’t want to admit to this, but . . . “There’s more than just a freeze spell. I froze him so he couldn’t flail around. That’ll wear off before too long and I’ll have to decide on a different fix.”
“And the other layer is?”
I ignored my father’s question. “I froze him as he was. The magic infecting him was too strong, there was no way I could take it off. Only the original caster can—or it’ll end when his or her life ends.” That option was sounding pretty good right about now. If I could get my hands on the magic-user who’d done this, the remainder of his or her life would be pretty short. Like, ten seconds or less. “He’ll just stay the way he was right before I cast the spell. He won’t get sick. He won’t age
, and I hope the hex won’t progress any either . . .”
My father looked amazed. “I don’t even know how you would begin to do that and keep him alive.”
“It’s a rather familiar trick,” I said. I didn’t want to explain any further, though I had a feeling I’d have to.
“What do you mean?”
“Who else near and dear to you is also frozen in time, staying one way forever and ever, never aging, never dying, never changing . . . ?”
Wesley stared. “Did you do what I think you did?”
“Don’t look so aghast,” I said, processing his shock. “You did it with Lainey.”
“I gave her a tiny bit of my soul so she wouldn’t be corrupted,” he said, his features turning white. “She was whole otherwise, no other problems. She wasn’t rotting on the inside, some sort of very black magic destroying her.”
“So I gave him a bit more than a tiny bit.”
“How much more?” Wesley looked like he was going to be sick.
“I don’t know. Maybe a third.”
“A third!”
“Give or take.”
“What the hell!” Wesley blasted. “A third? You have absolutely no idea what that’s going to do to you! Or to him!”
“Well, I had to give enough to actually keep him alive, so—”
“Holy shit.” Wesley put his head in his hands.
“Wow.” I didn’t know what to say. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear like that.”
“You’re going to hear it now.” He was shaking his head. “Oh, my God.”
“I didn’t know what to do!” I shrieked.
“That much is obvious.”
“I just did the first thing that came to mind that might work. I wasn’t sure, of course, that this would freeze the spell, but—”
“Well, we’re going to find out pretty soon.”
“Why are you so mad at me?”
“Why am I so mad?” he repeated. “I don’t know, maybe because you just powered something up that no one will be able to stop. You did it without thinking. If you went mad, there would have been no way to stop you. Magic-wise, you’re the most powerful being on this whole planet.”