The agony drowned me. It hurt. It hurt so much. The land would consume me.
Rowena.
Through the bloody haze covering my eyes, I reached toward the smudge of magic burning in my mind and struck the pillar.
My vision cleared for an agonizing moment, suddenly razor-sharp, and I saw Curran lock his huge fangs on the back of Moccus’s neck and bite through it. The great boar gasped and went limp, finally at peace.
The pillar shattered, the molten liquid spilling, each drop turning into a perfect globe of glass, suffused with stolen magic.
Don’t panic, Erra’s cool voice reminded me from my memory.
The glass was mine. I crunched the droplets with my power. They broke as one, then again, and again, raining down in a glittering waterfall, and I crunched them again and again, feeding their magic back into the land while a crystal rain fell onto the soil, slipping into the earth.
The wailing lessened, then grew quiet, then turned to a whimper, a whisper, and finally vanished. I fell on the ground, landing badly on my side, and blinked. My hands weren’t charred. Not even my left, which I’d stuck into the fire.
I sat up. A perfect circle spread around the pillar, green with fresh grass. A familiar aroma filled the area. It smelled like spice and honey. Delicate flowers had sprouted all around me, small white stars with black centers. I had made them once before, when I’d cried during a flare, because a man who served Morrighan had died. I cared for him, and I had tried to keep him alive, but in the end, I’d had to let him go.
Rowena lay on the ground next to me, naked but unburned.
She opened her eyes, raised her hand, and struggled to say something.
Alive. She’d survived. We’d done it.
I felt oddly numb.
My father sat on the ground next to me and gently touched one of the flowers. Ghastek knelt by Rowena, took her into his arms with infinite care, and carried her away.
The boar’s corpse sprawled on the ash, all of its flesh stripped, the great bones rolling gently, as the lion dug into its stomach. The awful chewing sounds of a huge predator eating echoed through Kings Row. A part of me knew this was Curran and he was eating a god, and I should be freaked out by it, but most of me refused to deal with it. I was spent.
“Has the creature spoken to you?” my father asked.
“Yes. He wants to conquer.”
“So did his brother. What else did he say?”
“He offered for me to be his queen. He wants me to betray you. He hasn’t gotten around to saying it, but he will.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I reminded him that my father and my aunt killed his brother and destroyed his army, so he was a losing bet. He told me he wasn’t his brother and promised to prove it. This is his proof.” I turned to him. “He has the yeddimur.”
A muscle jerked in my father’s face. “They are an abomination.”
So the great and powerful Nimrod had a weakness after all.
“Is he really a dragon? Was his brother a dragon?”
“Yes.”
Great. Freaking fantastic.
“He said his brother proposed marriage to Erra.”
My father sneered, and I saw his older sister in his face. “We don’t marry serpents. We erase them from the flow of history.”
“Oh good.”
We sat quietly for a long moment.
“Tell me of the dragon,” Roland asked.
“His name is Neimheadh. He ruled Ireland and Scotland with his army of human soldiers and corrupted creatures. When the magic weakened, he retreated into the mists with his army. Now he’s back. He took people from towns on the edge of Atlanta and boiled them for their bones.”
“The tie that binds.”
I looked at him.
“His kind make their lairs in pockets of reality, a small fold in the fabric of time and space,” Roland said. “They are creatures of immense magic, and they warp the natural order of things to make their homes. This Neig has taken his troops with him into his lair. They existed within it for so long, they themselves became bound to it. The warped magic permeated them and changed them. The magic here isn’t ample enough to sustain him or his army, not unless the wave is quite potent. He and his forces must absorb the magic of our reality to reattune themselves. Humans are magic and numerous.”
“They eat the human bones, so they can manifest here when the magic is weaker?”
“Drink them, most likely. Grind them into dust with magic and mix them with milk. A barbaric practice.”
I rubbed my face. Simple explanations were usually correct ones. Consuming people would be logistically difficult. Too much mass. Bone powder made more sense. Here is your bone smoothie, great way to start the day. I wanted to vomit.
Roland reached out and stroked my shoulder. “Most of them never deal with us, but those who choose to mix with humans are a plague on this world. A plague I will one day cure.”
“Father . . .”
“Yes, Blossom?”
“If he has to drink this bone powder to manifest during magic, how many people will he have to kill to survive through tech?”
“Hundreds of thousands,” my father said.
“Can I enter this pocket realm and kill him?”
“You can’t enter without permission.”
“What if he gave me permission?”
“You would be very foolish to enter.”
“But if I did . . .”
“I forbid it.”
Aha, that and a dollar would get him a cup of bad coffee. He wasn’t exactly in a position to forbid me anything.
Roland softened his voice. “If somehow you end up within his domain, do not eat or drink. If you consume something, it will anchor you to his realm and you will be subject to his power for a short while. It would wear off unless he continued to feed you. As long as you don’t eat anything he presents to you, you can leave at will and nothing within his lair can hurt you. Simply wish to be back here, and the mists will tear, and you will be back in our world. In his realm, you are a ghost. You can’t be hurt, but you cannot hurt him in return. But it’s not a place you should ever visit, Blossom. Dragons are unpredictable, and their command of magic surpasses ours. They’re good at manipulation.”
Curran raised his huge head. His mouth was bloody. He staggered from the corpse, a huge nightmarish beast, too big to be real.
“He sent his champion to fight me,” I told him.
“Where is the champion now?”
“Dead.”
My father smiled.
“You sent assassins to murder your grandson. Your only grandson. They wanted to kill him and eat him. You are despicable, Father. How do you look at yourself in the mirror in the morning?”
“What happened to the assassins?”
“I killed them.”
“I know,” he said. “I felt them die.”
“Your own grandson.”
He smiled at me again. “The sahanu were growing troublesome.”
I stared at him, speechless. “Wow. Just wow. You used me to clean up your cult.”
He shrugged. “You used me to rescue a woman who betrayed me. I’d say we’re even. Besides, my grandson was never in danger. You are my daughter, Blossom. One of a kind.”
“We are not even. Not even close. Do not come after Conlan again. I swear I will kill you.”
A strange contortion gripped the lion’s body. He arched his back, then jerked his head to the sky. His great maw gaped open. The sun reflected on his fangs, which were longer than my legs. He roared, his eyes blazing with gold. A nimbus of pale silver twisted around him, crackling with violent energy. Two protrusions burst from his back. He snarled, and the protrusions unfolded into black wings.
That’s it. I’m done.
T
he mercs screamed and howled. The look on Barabas’s face could’ve launched a fleet of spaceships.
“Some are born to godhood,” Roland said. “Others attain it. I cautioned you against marrying him.”
The lion walked to us.
Wind whispered. My father was gone. The grass where he’d sat was slowly springing back.
The lion stopped in front of me. He folded his wings, lowered his colossal head, and slowly, carefully lay down on the grass, his face to me. He could’ve taken me whole into his mouth, and there would still be room for ten more people.
“Is he silver?” I asked.
Nobody said anything.
“Is he silver?” I repeated, raising my voice.
“Yes,” Julie whispered.
I got up, turned my back, and walked away from him.
* * *
• • •
“DO YOU WANT to talk about it?”
I lay on the edge of the woods, the grass soft under me. The scar of Kings Row lay a few yards away. The sky above me was a beautiful blue, and cute little clouds floated here and there, like fluffy little sheep chasing each other in a vast pasture.
“Baby?”
Curran sat next to me. He’d ripped through his clothes during his dramatic transformation. He’d scrounged up a pair of shorts somewhere, but the rest of him was naked. His hair fell on his shoulders in a blond mane.
I turned my head and looked at him. To say that Curran worked out would be like saying that a marathon runner occasionally jogged. His body was a meld of strength and flexibility that translated into explosive power. He had a raw, feral edge that drew me to him like iron to a magnet. I knew that body intimately. And right now, it was bigger. Taller, with broader shoulders, crisp definition, heartbreaking proportions, corded with steel-hard muscle. He was perfect.
No human was perfect.
He must’ve been perfect for a while. Funny how I hadn’t noticed it before. Probably because I loved him. To me, he’d always been perfect, with all of his flaws. I turned back to look at the sky.
A muscular arm blocked my view of the clouds. He was offering to let me punch him in the arm.
I raised my hand, moved his arm out of the way, and studied the clouds.
“It’s not that bad,” he said.
“How many animal gods have you eaten besides the tiger in my dad’s castle and Moccus back there?”
“Four.”
Yep. Exactly what I thought. “Funny how that’s the exact number of your hunting expeditions.”
He didn’t say anything.
And my aunt had encouraged him. Not that surprising, since she’d never liked him. The betrayal stung.
He reached out to touch my shoulder. I slid out of the way.
“Kate . . .”
“You’re a god. You’re no longer human. Your thoughts and your behavior are no longer your own. With all of the things my screwed-up family has done, they’ve always steered clear of godhood like it was on fire. And you, you jumped into the flames. You’ve lost your humanity, Curran. You don’t control yourself anymore. You are controlled by the faith of the people who pray to you. What happens when the magic wave ends? What if you disappear?”
He opened his mouth.
I sat up. “I just want to know why. Conlan and I weren’t enough for you? What did you want?”
“Power,” he said.
“I thought you loved us.”
“I love you more than anything.”
“I understand if I wasn’t enough. It’s fucked up, but I get it. But you have a responsibility to your son. How could you?”
I didn’t look at him.
“Why the White Warlock?” he asked.
“What?”
“Why do you need the White Warlock?”
Ah. The best defense is a good offense. “The witches and I need her for the ritual to weaken my father and put him into a coma. For it to work, we need someone to channel the collective power of the Covens. I can’t be that person. My power is too different, but she can.”
“And what happens if the ritual fails?”
“Who snitched?”
He sighed. “Nobody. I saw it in your eyes when we fought your father. How about your responsibility as a wife and mother? What about that?”
“What about it?”
“You’ll kill yourself. Or you’ll kill him and that will kill you. Either way, you’re going to leave me and our son. Do you think Conlan will care that you sacrificed yourself? Is it going to comfort him when he’s crying because you’re not there?”
“He’ll be alive to cry. You’ll be alive. That’s all I care about. My dad and I are bound. As long as one of us lives, the other does, too. Do you think I want this?” I turned to him. “I would do anything for just a little more time. Ten years. Five. One. Any time at all to be with you both. But he is coming. He already tried to kill Conlan. The only way to keep him safe is to take my father out of the equation.”
“Roland won’t be the only enemy Conlan will have.”
“Yes, but right now he is the worst. I don’t want to do it, Curran. I’m not looking forward to it. But if I have to die so our son can live, so my father is stopped, then I’ll kill that sonovabitch, even if I die too.”
“I gathered,” he said, his voice dry.
“If I have to do it, don’t try to stop me.”
He reached out and took my hand. I let him.
“I won’t stop you,” he said. “It’s your life. It’s your choice what you do with it. I’ve tried to stop you from doing things in the past, and it’s never worked. It’s pointless. You will do what you will do.”
I had expected a fight. This was too easy.
He gave me his Beast Lord stare. “But if I agree to this, you have to accept that I will do everything in my power to make sure things don’t go that far.”
“Including becoming a god.”
“Including that. I needed an upgrade. This was the only way to get it.”
“But you’re not you, Curran.”
He grinned, showing me his teeth. “Still me.”
“Bullshit. Have you seen Barabas’s face? What happens when shapeshifters start worshipping you?”
“They won’t have the chance. It’s all coming to a head one way or another.” He said it with an awful finality.
There was no way back from godhood. It was terminal. It would eat at him, slowly but surely, gradually changing him until the man I loved disappeared. He knew it, and he went through with it anyway.
He had done it for me. He’d given up his free will so I would survive. Oh, Curran.
If we somehow survived, I would stay with him forever, living for the glimpses of my old Curran in the god.
“What happens when the tech hits?”
“Nothing will happen. Erra has been gauging my divinity. There isn’t enough to make me a god yet. I’ll be fine.”
He pulled me to him, wrapping his arms around me, and inhaled my scent. “I’ll never let you go.”
I put my face into the crook of his neck. “You have to.”
“No.” He kissed my hair. “You and me, Kate. We’re forever. Conlan will grow up and go his own way, and you and I will still be here, squabbling over who is going to save whom.”
He held me while I cried quietly into his shoulder and wished with everything I had for a life I wasn’t going to get. What good is immortality if the people you love can’t be there with you?
For the first time in my life, I wished magic had never come.
Finally, I stopped. The tears had only lasted for a couple of minutes, but it had felt like an eternity.
“We’ll have to tell the Conclave,” I said.
Curran grimaced. “Yes. They won’t like it. They would accept a fire mage, but a dragon isn’t something
they can cope with.”
I knew it. Luther had explained it to me once. We lived in an age of chaos, never knowing if magic or tech would have the upper hand or what they would throw at us. The human mind wasn’t built to cope with constant uncertainty. Instead, it sought to find order and consistency, some pattern, some sort of logical equation where a certain consequence always followed a specific event. Water evaporated when heated to a boiling point. The sun rose in the east and set in the west. All magic waves eventually ebbed. We managed to distill rules out of chaos. These core beliefs kept us sane and we protected them at all costs, otherwise the house of logic built on these foundations fell apart and we tumbled into madness.
“An elder being can’t manifest unless there is a flare” was a core belief. A dragon was an overwhelming being, a creature of so much power and devastation that nothing in our arsenal could match it. It was like the idea of being hit by a meteorite. Theoretically, we were aware that a burning space rock could fall out of the sky at any moment and kill us, but we refused to dwell on this possibility. The idea that a dragon could manifest at any time and attack the city and there was no defense against it was so frightening that our brains stepped on the brake, rejecting the possibility. And this dragon wasn’t just manifesting. He was smart and cunning. He had an army and wanted to invade. We would need ironclad evidence to pull the Conclave’s collective heads out of the sand.
“I know the Conclave won’t believe us,” I said. “We’ll have to convince them.”
“It will take the entire city.” He stroked my arm. “We only have one chance to build this coalition. If we go with a fire mage, and Neig manifests as a dragon, it will come out that we knew and deliberately kept it hidden.”
“Then the alliance will fall apart.”
He nodded. “And when your father comes, there will be nobody to fight him.”
A Jeep drove away. The blond driver took the turn fast. Julie.
“Where is she going?” I wondered.
“Who knows.”
As we walked back to the scar, I turned to him. “You should give up and let your mane grow out.”
“Mm-hm. And then we can stay up late, and you can braid it, and put ribbons in it . . .”
Magic Triumphs Page 24