I brought my hands up in the universal shrug meaning ‘Why?’ Then I showed him four fingers. Why four? Why four pentagrams, I meant, for three demons?
Sayers’ confusion deepened.
Stupid freaking sorcerers.
Sienna marked her place in the book with the sacrificial knife, then put the book in her fabric bag. Up close, the bag was actually just a burlap sack tied at the two upper corners with rope. This … this was baffling from a girl who’d once put a Louis Vuitton bag on layaway for over a year, and then slept on my couch so she didn’t have to pay rent at the same time.
A little more frantically now, I gestured toward Sayers — ‘You’ — then slashed my hand in the air and pointing at my chest again — ‘Not me.’
You not me.
“What?” Sayers asked.
“Jesus Christ,” I snapped as I watched Sienna spin around. “You stupid freaking sorcerer. Four pentagrams for three demons?”
“The fourth triggers the spell —”
“No, idiot. A sorcerer triggers a spell … or a black witch with the powers of a sorcerer. This pentagram is for her spell. You know, for when she drains your magic. Duck, asshole.”
Sayers ducked as Sienna lunged toward him with a small switchblade she’d had hidden in her cloak.
The sorcerer spun away but got his foot caught on the ropes of the pentagram. The spell sealed it from underneath, but the thick rope was still difficult to walk on.
“Been taking your smarty-pants pills, hey Jadey?” Sienna sneered.
It doesn’t take much intelligence to outsmart you, was on the tip of my tongue, but I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to address her. I didn’t want to treat her like a person.
As Sayers fell, he raised his hands, muttered something under his breath, and cast a spell. I still couldn’t taste the magic, but I could see it. The unknown spell hit Sienna, slamming her back against the ward that kept her just out of my reach.
Sayers scrambled to his feet as Sienna fell to her knees.
Kett rose out of the fog beside me. “It was smart to play them off each other,” he said.
“Excuse me?” I answered in mock surprise. “Did you just compliment me?”
Kett leveled a cool I’m-not-amused look at me. I grinned back.
The black witch and the sorcerer continued to do battle within the pentagram.
“She’ll kill him eventually,” Kett said.
“Yeah. We need to counter the connection to the other pentagrams before that. I gather we can’t do it the same way we did in the cave?” Kett and I had collapsed the pentagram in the Sea Lion Caves by using the magic in his blood as a catalyst, which I then triggered with my knife.
“No, not with four pentagrams tied together.”
“If collapsing this one would triggers the others, then we take them out of order. Get Mory out first?”
“You would kill Edmonds and Clark to rescue the necromancer?” Kett asked the question without judgement, but with a lot of curiosity.
“Okay, fine,” I said.
Sayers had been holding his own, but Sienna’s spells were hitting him harder and harder as the fight progressed.
“Sorcerer,” I called. “Take down the ward. We’ll spare your life.”
Sienna slammed Sayers with her fireblood spell. He was able to scream, so I gathered it didn’t hit him at full strength.
“We have to counter the ward,” I hissed at Kett.
“Without witches at each pentagram —”
“Stop nay saying and come up with something.”
“When the sorcerer dies, any spell solely constructed by him will fall as well.”
I turned from glaring at Kett to watch Sienna looming over Sayers. He was dragging himself away from her, toward Kett and me. He was more than half dead already.
“Sienna,” I said. “Stop this. I don’t understand any of this. Why are you doing it? To what end?”
“Oh, so now you want to talk to me? Now you want to know why?” Sienna answered. “There is no ‘Why.’ No ‘Because.’ There is only today and then tomorrow. And tomorrow, I shall be more than I was today.”
Sayers rolled over on his stomach, locked eyes with me, and reached for the point of the pentagram that I was closest to. Sienna yanked the sorcerer backward by his hair as his fingers brushed the point where the ropes intersected.
The ward fell.
Kett and I lunged forward just as Sienna slit Sayers throat.
Blood spurted across my face and chest. My sword was in my hands. I drew back to swing. Sienna’s magic was everywhere. I could taste it as it swirled around Sayers, as if it might be lapping at the lifeblood pumping out of him.
My blade was inches from Sienna’s neck as my foot landed on the top edge of the concrete wall.
Everything went black.
Sienna had trapped the wall.
∞
Kett would have called this touch-triggered spell inspired. I just called it crazy painful, and was super pissed at myself for missing it within all the magic-diffusing fog and Sayers’ magic literally gushing out of him.
I knew it was Sienna’s work, because when I did finally wake — sprawled with my ass on the hood of another car and my head crammed against the short concrete footing of the exterior railing — her magic was all I could taste. Trigger-released spells not tied to a magical object, which I’m sure I would have sensed, were impressive. I mourned for the witch who had to die for Sienna to learn that trick.
I tried opening my eyes, but all I saw was black and pinpoints of light … then a flashing light? A plane. I was staring at the night sky.
I rolled off the car and just lay on the concrete for a while. I couldn’t feel my legs. I was really hoping the foot that had triggered the spell hadn’t been blown to bits. I’m not sure my dragon-inherited healing worked on missing limbs. I cranked my neck sideways to look. Nope, I still had two feet.
The fog was gone. So Sayers was dead.
I reached out with my dowser senses — struggling to get the taste of Sienna’s dark blood magic out of my mouth, and nose, and head — and tried to find Kett. I couldn’t sense him, but when I cranked my head in the other direction, I could see the buckled and trashed railing to my left. I guessed he’d gone off the roof. Lucky for him that he was already dead, so the five-storey fall couldn’t kill him.
A whole hell of a lot of magic was boiling up from the center of the parking lot. I managed to sit up and look as more of my body came under control. I could taste Sayers, Edmonds, Clark, and Mory, as well as Sienna. My sister’s magic overrode all the others.
Sienna stood with Sayers obviously dead at her feet. She was reading from the demon history book. The asshole sorcerer who’d written the chronicle had included the incantation used in 1888. Freaking arrogant sorcerer. I could see Sienna’s lips move, but I couldn’t hear her.
Yeah, that really was a wicked stunning spell.
I managed to get to my feet, even though I still couldn’t feel the right one, and reached for my sword. It wasn’t on my back.
Damn.
I looked around, but Sienna was raising the sacrificial knife above her head now. Though I had no idea what she was going to do with it, I ran at her.
She turned, and saw me coming. Just as I leaped for her, she simply dropped the knife into the pool of Sayers’ blood at her feet.
I crashed into her and we flew onto the empty pavement behind the pentagram, rolling ass over head until we slammed against the metal door to the stairs. The force of our tumble actually caused the door and its concrete housing to buckle and collapse.
From behind me, I sensed dark, dusty cemetery-tasting magic. Then dank, rotten graveyard magic spread down deep, as if reaching into the crap-filled bowels of the earth.
“Drake,” I screamed, “cut the rope!”
I untangled myself from Sienna, who thankfully appeared to be knocked out. I tossed off the clumps of con
crete that hindered me and made it to my feet for a third time in less than ten minutes. I ran for the pentagram, feeling the magic grow as it hit the anchor point five storeys below. It then sprung back to hit the first pentagram. Edmonds started screaming as if he was being ripped apart. Sayers must have cast the sleep spells, but now with him dead, they were nullified.
Oh, God …
My right foot wasn’t working properly. I hadn’t noticed before, but now — waiting to hear Mory start screaming — I felt like I could barely move, as if I was stuck in masses of marshmallows or molasses.
I made it to the pentagram and peered over the short wall and through the ropes, seeing Mory and Drake one floor below. Drake was hacking at the rope with his broadsword.
“My knife!” I cried. “My knife!”
“Didn’t work,” Drake yelled back as he slashed at the spelled rope a couple of inches from Mory’s feet.
The necromancer looked up at me. She was clutching her necklace, and her eyes were way, way too big for her pixie face.
Then she smiled, just to break my heart further.
A demon literally ripped through and out of Edmonds’ corpse three-storeys below. It was mottled gray, looked vaguely like a Chinese guardian lion without the mane, and was the size of my bakery walk-in fridge. That is if my fridge suddenly grew seven-inch claws and double-fanged teeth. Buying us a few seconds, the demon helpfully stopped to eat Edmonds’ corpse as its first meal in the human dimension.
Though where the hell Sienna had actually summoned it from — seeing as demons turned to dust when killed — I had no freaking idea. My sister had obviously figured out a way to substitute the sorcerers corpses for the nonexistent demon corpses. Then, combining sorcery, necromancy, and black magic, she’d raised the vanquished. So did that mean that demons left spectral energy behind when they were killed? That idea didn’t help at all with the terror that was currently controlling my brain.
Clark — still strung up directly above this first demon — had managed to twist his head enough to see it rise through Edmonds’ corpse. He began to shriek in anticipation.
The screaming grew worse as the magic moved up another level and hit the portly sorcerer. He would be a good-sized snack for his demon. Oh, God. That was a sick … sick … utterly terrified thought.
I locked my gaze to Mory’s. Drake was barely denting the magic of the pentagram ward with his sword. I could see new slash marks each time he brought the blade down, and he wouldn’t give up before he broke through, but it was going to be too late.
An eerie calm settled over me. Then I did the only thing I could do.
Without even looking, I bent down and picked up the sacrificial knife, which was now coated in Sayers’ blood. I could sense that the knife was still tied to the demon spell, but I had no idea how to use that. I wasn’t that kind of a witch.
I was an alchemist.
I took all the magic I could feel still in Sayers’ blood — Sienna hadn’t even siphoned a third of it — and used my magic to bind it to the residual magic of the knife and the remaining magic of the summoning spell. I fortified the blade with everything I had at my fingertips. I informed it that it could now cut through any magic.
Then I hacked through the blood-soaked rope at my feet like a crazy person.
Yes, I was performing blood magic without even pausing to worry about the consequences. Yes, I created a knife of terrible power filled with the blood magic of a sorcerer almost as powerful as Blackwell — again without even worrying about it.
I couldn’t get to Mory quickly enough any other way.
The rope gave way and I fell, hit the ward that was still actively holding Mory prisoner, and rolled off it to Drake’s side. Sayers’ body fell as well, but it didn’t roll off the dome of the ward. Instead, it hung rather grotesquely suspended over Mory.
The Edmonds demon shook its head — the only remaining evidence of the creature’s host were the grisly bits caught in its maw — and leaped upward in an attempt to grab hold of Clark, or at least the rope holding Clark. It couldn’t get a hold, so it shrieked, opening its mouth terrifyingly wide. As in, the width of a fridge door.
Drake pressed the jade knife into my hand but I ignored him. Clark stopped screaming below us. That wasn’t good.
I brought the transformed sacrificial knife down on the rope of the pentagram.
The second demon tore through Clark’s corpse fifteen feet below us, then immediately started gorging itself on the dead sorcerer even before its hind legs had fully emerged.
Drake thrust his arms forward just as the ward, and then the rope, collapsed underneath Mory’s feet. He snagged the fledgling necromancer’s bound wrists just as the Clark demon — still finishing off Clark’s corpse — grabbed Mory’s legs.
The displaced magic of the pentagram ricocheted through the severed rope and hit the Clark demon, which was hanging off the rope with one hand and straining to eat Mory with the other.
The Clark demon shrieked and lost its hold on Mory.
The unfinished spell hit Sayers’ corpse, which was tangled in the rope still tied to the other side of the low concrete wall. As Drake pulled Mory over that wall, the third demon erupted from Sayers’ corpse, covered in blood and intestines. It didn’t pause to eat Sayers, though — not when I was alive and breathing and within easy reach.
The demon hit me. Its claws raked through my hoodie and scored my leather vest underneath. We tumbled backward, smashing into Drake, who had time only to wrap himself around Mory to protect her.
I wrestled frantically with the demon, which was only two feet taller than me, but felt like it weighed a hundred tons. It was striking me faster than I could heal, and I was already slick with my own blood.
But we’d managed to rescue Mory. Everything else would be okay now. My heart rate steadied and my mind cleared.
I jammed the sacrificial knife into the demon’s maw, managing to get both my feet underneath its chest to throw it off me. It hit a car across the way and slid off the trunk, shrieking and batting at the knife wedged in its mouth. The idiot had bitten down, puncturing its upper jaw and nose with the blade.
I rolled to my feet.
Across from me, Drake was defending Mory from the Clark demon. It was still somehow wearing the sorcerer’s knit cardigan, the sweater tangled around the small horns or ridges of its head. For some reason, this sight made me crazy angry.
Drake swung his broadsword and slashed the demon’s shoulder, cutting deep. The demon scrambled away, just out of reach of the blade. Drake couldn’t press it because Mory — clutching my jade knife in both hands — was hunched against a car. She was shaking violently, maybe going into shock. But she’d cut the ropes binding her wrists and ankles at least.
The Sayers demon decided to ignore the knife embedded in its mouth and leaped for me, but I was ready for it this time. I met its lunge with a forward chest kick and followed through with a knee underneath its jaw. This drove the knife farther into what should have been the creature’s brain, but caused it only to stumble.
“Drake,” I called. “Behind you on three.”
The fledgling guardian didn’t respond as the Clark demon took another swipe at him, but I knew he heard me.
“One …” I said, lunging forward with my left foot. “Two …” I leaped into the air, bringing my right foot — which I still couldn’t totally feel — forward. “Three …”
I slammed this foot into the Sayers demon, driving it back toward Drake. In a spectacular move, he spun, severed the neck of the demon with his broadsword, and then continued his spin to once again face off with the Clark demon. He’d kept himself between the demon and Mory the entire time.
The Sayers demon’s head slipped sideways and hit the ground in a shower of ash.
The Clark demon shrieked, scurried back to the collapsed pentagram, and leaped for the severed rope hanging down from the roof.
I crossed to and picked up the
sacrificial knife. Its dark magic thrummed against the skin of my palm. I dusted the ash off it and hoped I could unmake what I’d made.
Drake was dragging Mory to her feet when the Edmonds demon, looking rather slashed and bruised, climbed up the concrete column and leaped from ledge to ledge toward the roof.
Kandy — in full half-beast form — climbed after him, using the ropes of the severed pentagram and the ledges. She was favoring one arm as she did so.
“Wait,” I cried after the werewolf, but she was gone. “At least they’re heading for the roof and not the street.” I realized my mistake as soon as I said the words. Sienna was on the roof. “Drake, you need to move Mory to safety.”
Dank magic blew by me like a blast of wind. My ears sealed and then unsealed with a pop. “Shit,” I swore. “She’s awake.”
I looked toward the open railing and could see a ripple of magic in the air. A ward. “She’s used Sayers’ sand boundary for the fog to seal us in.”
Damn it. My sister was way too strong. And Kandy was up on the roof alone.
“Stairs,” I hissed at Drake. Sienna might expect us to climb up after the demons. Maybe the stairs gave us a bit of a chance at surprising her.
Drake got Mory’s arm over his shoulders. The petite necromancer was so much shorter than the fledgling guardian that her toes barely touched down in this position. Which was fine, because Drake had no issue with practically carrying her as we ran for the stairs.
The top of the stairs were shattered from Sienna and me smashing into them from above. That the two of us together could crush this much concrete and steel was a scary, scary reality, so I just pushed it out of my mind.
I climbed up first, staying crouched at the upper level and hopefully out of sight. Then I reached down for Mory. Drake lifted her to me and I hauled her up. Jesus, her wrists were going to be bruised to hell from all of this, but she didn’t make a sound as I settled her beside me in the rubble.
Drake joined us.
I reached behind me and touched the jade knife Mory still clutched. She tried to press it into my hand and I shook my head. I pushed my magic into the blade and whispered, “No one can take this away from you, except me.”
Treasures, Demons, and Other Black Magic (Dowser Series) Page 16