by Scott Tracey
“You can’t stop a hellhound with magic, Braden. No one can. And unless you’ve got a creature just as deadly in your back pocket, you can’t kill it with violence. You either give it a target, or you wait for the spell to dissipate naturally and pray for the best.”
“Well, how long’s that going to take?” I demanded.
He sighed. “Hellhounds aren’t like the big powers. They don’t have a lot of power, so the spell could hold them here for … weeks? Months? Unless you can give them a target, and let them do what they’re supposed to.”
“Well, that’s not happening.” My voice was flat.
“Where do you think you are?” I could picture the way the veins in his forehead were flaring up and his skin was turning that blotchy red color, like tomatoes that had gone bad. “Belle Dam’s not a happy place. No one’s going to pat you on the head for being a good little witch. They’ll be measuring you to find the best place to stick the knife. Haven’t you been paying attention?”
“You’re insane. I’m not killing someone. And when the hell did you become so bloodthirsty?”
“When I grew up. You can’t do this by yourself. You’re going to make too many mistakes. I’ve got … ”
“You’ve got what? Listen.” I tried to calm my voice, to speak with confidence. “If there’s a way to stop them, I’ll figure it out.”
“No. You’re not strong enough for this. They’re going to chew you up. I’m going to have to … ” He sounded like he was struggling with his words, stumbling over them. What was going on with him?
The phone went dead with a shriek of noise worse than nails on a chalkboard. I flinched, throwing it down onto the bed.
John didn’t know anything either. So I was going to have to figure this out on my own. I dropped down onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. Hours till dark. Hours to find the perfect solution.
No worries.
Gulp.
Twenty-Two
There was nothing in the book that helped me out at all. I even read through it two more times just in case something would pop out. I did find a section that talked about legends outside a Scottish village where witches had seen creatures in the forest, but the townspeople summarily denied anything. Montserrat thought the town was under a geas—a magic that creates walls and chasms in the mind to keep certain information from being revealed. It made me think about Uncle John.
Eventually the sun began to set and I started to get ready.
When I called Trey, he told me to wait for him inside until he got there. The assertive tone immediately made my lip curl. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about Trey’s ambush, or the way he was drafting me into the Lansings whether I wanted to go along or not. I had to fix things, get them back on track before everything got too out of control.
“Hide inside like a scared little bitch,” I said to myself, pretending to be him as I headed outside. “Don’t worry, I’ll fight the big bad monster with my perfectly gelled hair and charming smile. Just do as you’re told.”
That annoying, rational part of me kept trying to interject. Things like Trey’s just worried you’ll get hurt and He just wants to help. But it wasn’t helping, and I wasn’t going to get hurt. It was going to take a lot more than a hellhound to stop me.
“Should have guessed you wouldn’t listen,” Trey chimed in to my inner monologue, in front of me so suddenly that I jumped. The inner rage I was working myself into flickered at the shock. I must have really been out of it.
“I’m not a little kid,” I said, bending down to tie the shoelace that had come undone.
“What are you doing, Braden?” The exasperation in Trey’s voice made it clear that he wasn’t referring to the shoes. “I thought you were going to wait inside. It isn’t safe to be standing out here, with that thing out there.”
“I was,” I snapped. “Then I remembered that I’m not the one that needs protecting. Sorry, Dad.”
As I straightened, Trey stepped forward and invaded my personal space. “I’m definitely not your father,” he whispered, his warmth stirring against the cold surrounding me.
“I thought we had work to do. God’s holy mission or whatever.” I tried to hold on to the anger, the annoyance, anything but the flutters in my stomach.
Trey wrapped his arms across my shoulders, drawing closer. “You’re okay. And that’s a start.”
You shouldn’t be doing this. It’s wrong. “We need to go back to the cemetery.” My voice was shaky. “Where it started.” But try as I might, all I could focus on was the little bit of light glinting off the tip of Trey’s lower lip, the curve of his cheek and the dark lashes shining above his eyes.
“Who says romance is dead,” Trey said, his eyes dancing in the streetlights. “Some days, I think you have a death wish,” he continued. “Doing stuff like this, wandering around when there’s something out there that wants you dead.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I replied automatically. The hellhound was the least of my problems, the smallest part of a much bigger problem.
“You’ll tell me,” Trey was confident. “When you’re ready.”
We decided to walk to Angel’s Respite, figuring that if the hellhound was already roaming around, we’d have a better chance of seeing it. There wasn’t much small talk along the way. I kept my distance, hands shoved in my pockets. I was still trying to come up with a workable plan, although I had the feeling I’d end up winging it as usual.
The entrance to the cemetery stretched in front of us. One of the streetlights had gone out sometime after we’d left the other night, and masked much of the park from our eyes.
“How long before this thing turns up?” Trey asked.
The hellhound would track us down eventually, but there was no telling how long it would take. With the migraines back as usual, I couldn’t track the hellhound like I had the other night. And in the meantime, the hellhound could be anywhere. Terrorizing anyone.
“They can smell magic the same way I can smell your cologne,” I said, trying to think of something. Some sort of plan.
“Maybe we should have told my mother,” Trey said, sounding uncertain for the first time.
I could just picture the ways in which Catherine Lansing would approach the situation. “Sure. And after Jason Thorpe was found mauled to death, what then?”
“Then why summon it in the first place. That’s what you were doing in the cemetery, right?”
I wanted to explain that it was an accident, some bizarre trap set in place to be triggered if someone came trying to summon Grace’s ghost. But Trey wasn’t done yet.
“You weren’t planning to send them out on anyone, were you? I mean, I’d like to believe it was just some sort of accident, but the way you’re acting … ” Trey’s voice trailed off, but the doubt and accusation were clear.
There wasn’t time for this. “If you’re going to ask if I was sending them after your mother, then just do it,” I said, sinking down to rest on top of one of the gravestones. Maybe it was sacrilegious, but I’d already brought evil into the world.
“Did you?”
Once it was out there, the question hung between us like some sort of scarlet accusation. A monster that magic couldn’t stop, bred to seek out and destroy anyone that had even a sliver of the power in them.
“Braden?” Trey had gone still. I looked up to find myself the victim of an intense scrutiny.
Even if I’d wanted to, the idea had never crept into my head. Something else had interfered, a trap hidden in the ground that had infected my spell like a parasite. But that was starting to give me an idea. A way to undo what happened.
“Of course not,” I said slowly, carefully choosing my words. “You can leave. Everything will be fine now.” No one knew how to kill a hellhound, but had anyone ever tried infecting one?
I went to the monument for Grace Lansing. Behind me, Trey’s voice got loud. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The night had grown cool already. My thermal hoodie wasn’t going to protect against the chill for very long. I could smell a fire burning somewhere in the distance. I closed my eyes. Maybe it was fair to call this suicide: drawing out the spectral monster that adapts and grows immune to magic—while having nothing in the arsenal except magic.
I held my hands out, palms down, and focused on the magic. Come forth, I thought, feeling the power slowly rising like a tide. I hadn’t taken my glasses off. I’d hoped to wait until the magic was in full swing. Maybe that was the trick—if I overextended my powers, I could short-circuit the visions.
“Braden!” In the middle of feeling out the spell, Trey’s voice ripped through my concentration. I tried to smooth away my focus, to ignore him.
Big mistake. Something shoved me from behind, sending me slamming into Grace’s monument. The jagged edge at the top hit me right in the stomach, knocking the air out of me in a rush.
I was spun around just as quickly as I was shoved in the first place. Everything around me was spinning, but this wasn’t some drunken escapade. There was a blur in front of me, a man in a red sweatshirt moving faster than he should have. He grabbed the front of my shirt, acrid breath in my face.
“Not again,” he growled, shunting me upward like I weighed nothing at all. The tips of his knuckles smacked into my Adam’s apple and I started coughing instantly.
All in a matter of seconds. I recovered quicker than I’d have expected, shock making everything sharpen itself too fast. A red sweatshirt with “Arizona” etched across the front. Dark hair that had been shaved close to the scalp since the last time I’d seen him. A blazing anger that seemed to make even his eyes glow red.
“Drew?” I was still coughing. But now the pressure was focused on the tension of my sweatshirt as it pulled against the back of my neck, and underneath my arms.
“You let those things out. No more.” He was a big fan of the growling, threatening alpha male.
“No, you … you don’t get it,” I tried to explain. He lifted me higher. My shirt was pulling tight around my neck, chafing the skin. I tried extending my feet, to touch solid ground again, but I was too far up. I could barely breathe.
Then I heard a sound right off every cop show I’d ever watched.
“Put him down, Drew.” Trey’s voice was cold. I saw a glint of silver against black, heard the cocking of the hammer. I was too busy trying to grab onto Drew’s shirt to really understand what was happening.
All of a sudden, the pressure on my neck released and I fell to the ground. Coughing again, and trying to draw in as much oxygen as I could.
“Oh, have you been looking for me, Gentry?” Drew went on smoothly, as though a moment ago he hadn’t assaulted me. “Next time, leave a message.”
“Wha-what are you doing with a gun, Trey?” I wheezed. It was getting easier to breathe, but I thought for sure my Adam’s apple had become an innie in the process.
“You’re not going to shoot me.” Drew seemed oddly confident in that, his back still to Trey and his eyes locked on mine.
Trey snorted. “You tried to kill my sister. I promised my mother I’d take care of the problem.”
He’d tried to kill Jade? Riley had said that there had been an incident that got Drew kicked out of school. She hadn’t mentioned it involved attempted murder, though. No wonder the school expelled him. All things considered, it didn’t sound all that crazy, since he’d just assaulted me a few seconds ago.
“No.” Drew was full of composure and calm. “Your sister claimed I tried to kill her. There’s a difference.” His eyes focused on me in a narrowed slant. “I tried to warn you. Went and got mixed up in their lies, didn’t you?” He shook his head in mock pity.
“Don’t talk to him,” Trey ordered. “Just back away.”
I had to do something. “Put the gun—”
“How long after I got expelled was it before Mommy reinstated Jade’s allowance?” Drew cut me off, glancing over his shoulder. He took a step backwards, doing what Trey’d told him to do.
“Put the gun down, Trey,” I demanded.
“He just attacked you. Don’t be stupid, Braden,” Trey snapped.
“You let him make you the new little pawn?” Drew asked, sneering. “Too much to hope you’d actually stand up to them, huh?”
“Shut up,” I said, my voice shaking. “Just shut up.”
“‘Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war,’” Drew laughed.
“You’re quoting Shakespeare while I have a gun pointed at you?” I could see the grimace on Drew’s face lengthen as Trey pushed the gun further into his neck. “Back up, Braden. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
“You were the wolf,” I said, looking up at Drew. How was that even … I shook myself. Now was not the time to worry about all of that. I looked over at Trey. “I can handle myself.”
“A lovers’ spat. How gay,” Drew said with a smirk.
I reacted before Trey could open his mouth. I threw my hand out, instinctively throwing magic that twisted into azure lines. They smacked into Drew and hurtled him backwards. He wasn’t exactly airborne, but his heels skidded past two rows of graves before he tumbled into an angel statue. Perfect. The angel’s arms flowed downwards, a look of lament on her face. I wrapped the spell around him, tying it tight.
I turned to Trey. “Put. It. Down.” It was almost like they wanted me to forget the reason we were here.
He hesitated for a moment, but eventually he uncocked the gun and slid it back into the waistband of his jeans. “You don’t know what kind of mistake you’re making, Braden. He’s dangerous.”
“Stand back.” I pulled the glasses off, bracing for the pain. It was pointless. The moment I did it, everything crashed forward with the force of a highway collision. It blindsided me the way it always did.
Nothing will ever be the same my soul feels murky blue darkness drowning from the inside left us too soon violent red so glad you’re in the ground bitch shadows once dwelt here a color that could survive the light shades of yellow in a better place. A woman with a veil stands before me, her eyes glowing through the lace design.
True power locked away, keys that cannot feel. All that was torn lies fallow here. It is not death but is still dying. Silver and red and heavenly blue, tales I am told, she says to me under cover of darkness, magic in greens and browns hides in plain sight a place of absence, where something does not dwell where it should.
My mind started to clear as they passed, too quick to grasp them all. Only snowflakes in the storm. I forgot about Trey and Drew, pushed everything to the furthest corner of my mind.
The hellhound’s trail was still visible to me, full of dark fire and burning shadows. I held out my arms again, turning my palms to the ground. The energy hadn’t returned to sleep. There was still magic in the air. All it would take was a little nudge.
I placed my palms against the ground. The magic came surging forth, free of restraints and totally wild. It began to spiral, colors of the rainbow becoming crystalline and dark at the same time. Every shade that existed in nature, and many that couldn’t be seen by the naked eye. And for a moment, they bowed before me.
It was like there was some sort of underground spring full of magic. The more I drew up, the more power came rushing out. I’d never felt anything quite like it—drawing magic out of the air was one thing, but this was like drawing up an ocean.
I didn’t try to channel it into any sort of spell, I just continued pulling it forth. The energy began to spin around me, creating a vortex.
Somewhere deep below me, I felt things unravelin
g. Not more booby traps. This was something else. It felt like bolts in a door, being thrown in succession.
The hellhounds could smell magic, attuned to it from the very start. What I was doing was the equivalent of a thousand signal flares, all leading to this spot.
Time passed; I wasn’t sure how much. My focus was on the cyclone around me, watching it spin so fast it fed itself. The force of it all drew more power from the ground, which in turn made it circle faster.
Braden! His warning pressed against my skin. I heard growling. The plan had worked. So far. Then again, I didn’t have much to go on after this.
I ascended through the maelstrom and looked down upon the town. Belle Dam was laid out before me in an organized series of lines and lights, each of them twinkling against the darkness that swirled around the town. The lines reminded me of the restaurant. Magical architecture.
And then I saw the darkness. At first I thought it was some sort of shroud, a spell of darkness and rot. It was something alien, beautiful but full of wrong. It drew on the unnatural the way magic drew upon nature.
I’d never seen anything like this before. Though I tried desperately to file it away somehow and understand it, that wasn’t in the cards. This wasn’t magic at all. The shape of it came into focus as black settled into different shades of gray. An oval shape emerged. An eye.
Except this one covered the entire town.
The moment the realization hit, I was dropped to the ground. The wellspring of magic was still pouring forth. The growling was getting louder. The hellhound pushing its way through the magic. I felt something else throw itself against the magic, only to be cast aside as flotsam.
In my absence my legs had started cramping and rigor mortis plagued my arms. Sweat was pouring down my face, covering my body with an icy sheen. Everything was heightened beyond control. As the wind pushed its way through each individual blade of grass, I heard explosions as they collided against each other.