Ruining me. Destroying everything I was and everything I would be. My sight finally focuses on Barrett, and I debate on whether or not I should tell him the truth.
“I— I haven’t performed a break in a long time. The last time…” I trail off almost unable to say it. The tremor of my past fear and agony rippling through me. “I was burned at the stake, and even then it wasn’t me who did the spell. More like it was done through me. So I’m more than a little rusty.”
Barrett takes a moment to digest what I just told him.
“This was why you were named Rogue, isn’t it? A Demon compelled you to perform a break, and you got caught by humans. You burned for a crime you had no intention of committing,” Barrett whispers, his voice like ice, his blue eyes burning like the coldest of flames.
“I woke up in a charred circle. My mother threw me some clothes, told me I was Rogue, and I’ve been on my own ever since. Later, I figured someone thought I was a necromancer or something. Because I came back. But my mother never taught me any kind of spells, so me summoning a Demon didn’t seem to be on the table. Until a month ago I didn’t even know I was half Demon.”
The room seems to go cold – which honestly I don’t mind because my hand feels like it’s on fire, but then it was Barrett who was looking at me so, defensive positions may be necessary. Marcus also doesn’t seem to be faring any better in the anger department.
“Ummm… guys?”
Marcus’ voice is garbled, like his teeth don’t quite fit into his mouth when he growls, “Your mother is on my shit list, princess. I really hope I don’t meet her in a dark alley anytime soon. I might have to get my mate to teach her some manners.” His palm gently lands on Barrett’s shoulder and squeezes, his touch appearing comforting rather than painful.
It takes me a solid minute to realize he means Barrett when he says ‘mate’ and even longer before I realize he means that they both are pissed on my behalf. I’d always known that Teresa did the wrong thing – banishing me, blaming me for something I didn’t mean to do – but I didn’t realize how validated I’d feel. My nose starts stinging, and I have to blink away the hot tears that are just begging to fall.
“You know, your bickering makes so much more sense now,” I crack trying to bring levity to the room. Barrett’s lips tip up, but it doesn’t mask the outright sorrow on his face. It isn’t pity, more like an empathy I didn’t believe him capable of.
“I’ll walk you through the break. Step by step. It’s simple. I’ve seen you do much more complex magic, so I know you’ll be fine. Quite honestly, it wouldn’t be safe for me to do it for you or I would,” Barrett murmurs, his voice gentle.
“Now, don’t go getting soft on me.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Barrett walked me through the steps of the break going over the proper pronunciation of the Latin. He didn’t have to tell me that performing a break especially this close to an object that was probably darker than the pits of Hell was a little sketchasaurus rex – even for me.
I examine the Celtic runes carved into the black candle. There are three, one for protection, one for breaking obstacles, and one for water. Why there would be a water rune on a candle, I wasn’t sure, but if we were washing away a spell, it sort of made sense. I’d always found runes odd in a way. Forgetting their names, but always remembering their definitions.
“Quit stalling,” Barrett chides with a knowing eyebrow raise. It reminds me of one of my mother’s patented disapproving stares. I manage to slip off my grandmother’s ring from the tattered ruin of my right hand and switch it to my left before I start, afraid the break will kill all the spells on that hand. Hell, I’m afraid of what the break will do to the blade itself.
I begin by drawing the circle with salt, whispering a blessing of protection before placing the bowl in the center. Dried angelica, rosemary, and sage go in the bowl before I snap my fingers to light it on fire, using the flame of the cleansing herbs to light the break candle. I blow the herbs out, letting them smoke enough so I can wash myself in the breath of the protection they offer. Only then do I start the chant of Latin, only part of my brain wondering why it is always a dead language used for spells and not English or French or Spanish.
Conteram hoc opus. Hoc carmen subsisto. Break this working. Cease this spell.
The more I say the words, the hotter the chain circling my wrist and forearm become, the metal burning my flesh until I smell it cooking. I try to shove the pain down but there is so much of it, it grows, builds, overflows my senses. I grip the bone blade tighter, needing to hold onto something, anything. But still, I continue my words, halting but true.
Conteram hoc opus. Hoc carmen subsisto.
The metal begins to melt, dripping onto the coffee table in a plink, plonk, splash. It’s everything I can do to not start screaming.
Conteram hoc opus. Hoc carmen subsisto.
The metal is gone, freeing me from the blade, but I can’t seem to stop chanting or let go of the dagger. The spell is in me now, working through me, taking control. Blood runs from my nose in a steady drip, drip, drip and still I can’t stop chanting the break.
Conteram hoc opus. Hoc carmen subsisto.
Oily black smoke begins to pour from the blade, hundreds of screams echoing off the walls as the room fills with it, dimming every light until the only source is from the flickering candle. Women’s screams, children’s, men’s – all of them writhing together in a sea of pain.
Then everything stops. The pain, the screams, my chanting. Barrett seems to freeze in his half sit, half crouch on the ottoman to my right. Marcus, too, is frozen, only his is mid-shift. Gray fur sprouts from his arms and face, the bones of both misshapen with his change. The bone blade falls from my hand in slow motion, tipping end over end until it lands hilt-down before falling flat in the center of the salt ring, knocking the bowl of still-smoking herbs to the side.
My break didn’t just free my hand. It freed something or maybe hundreds of somethings from the blade. The smoke begins to move, churning through the room until it finds an outlet – the fireplace. There it funnels from the room until there isn’t even a hint of the oily blackness. Only when it is completely gone does the candle finally flicker out, the room seeming to come back to life.
The light from the modern lamp at the side table flickers back on. Barrett finishes his jump to his feet. Marcus’ phase completes, twisting his bones until a giant gray wolf stands where he originally stood. I look down at what once was a burned ruin of a hand. The flesh is knitted back together, only a red raised scar where the metal of the necklace once was.
“What in the fresh hell was that?” a terse voice calls from the door. The voice belonging to my very pissed off grandmother.
“I get a call from Della losing her mind about your shop being damn near burned to the ground, search for your impudent little arse for ages, only getting a blip on you before it disappears, and I get here – in Barrett and Marcus’s house no less – and you’re doing arcane magic? Explain. Now.”
I’m at a loss as to which part of her rant I should address first when Barrett, of all people, comes to my defense.
“Someone came after the blade, and she protected it, Bernadette. But in doing so, she hurt herself. I instructed her to perform a break, and in doing so… Honestly, I don’t know if we did a very good thing or a bad one. The break freed souls from that blade. Tortured ones.”
Bernadette’s face goes white at his words, and she half sits, half falls into the closest chair.
“Then it was a good thing,” she whispers, her voice clogged with either fear or sorrow. It makes me wonder how many lives have been taken with that blade.
Makes me wonder if it stole their souls along with their lives.
Makes me wonder who made the blade in the first place.
Bernadette raises a shaking hand to her forehead, her voice husky as she speaks. “I came to warn you, my girl. You need to check on the people you love the most. Because if
you think bombing your shop is the worst he can do, you haven’t been paying attention.”
My body goes cold, which is a fucking feat in and of itself since I still feel like I’ve been thrust in an oven set to broil.
“The worst who could do?”
“Who else, child? Your father.”
Chapter Eight
MAX
My first thought is Ian. The one I couldn’t get on the phone. The one I was supposed to have plans with last night. I give my body a full pat down searching for the annoyingly slim device that meant I could contact anyone at any time. I sometimes forget to be amazed on a daily basis with just how far we’ve come since the 1600’s.
Yanking it from my back pocket, I’m freaking astounded to find the phone is not only charged, but it still fucking works. All the magic that’s been thrown around just in the last five minutes alone, you’d think the EMP the workings give off would fry the fucker.
Thankfully not.
I try him again only to be shuttled directly to voicemail. His phone is off, or destroyed, or…
I can’t even begin to try to contemplate that one. Instead, I do the next best thing and call his brother who picks up after only two rings.
“Joe’s pizza shack. You got the cheddar, we got the dough.”
There were times where I wanted to punch Aidan Keenan right in the face. This was one of them.
“Have you talked to your brother today?”
“No. Why?” Aidan asked, his worry practically palpable down the line.
“My shop was firebombed. I haven’t talked to him in twenty-four hours, and we were supposed to meet last night. I got roped into some bullshit with the Council, so I didn’t show,” I said giving Barrett my best you know it’s true eyebrow. “I tried calling him and his phone is shuttling me right to voicemail. Either he’s so pissed he’s blocked me, or something happened.”
“First, the Council? What the fuck did you do? And second, have you even attempted a locator spell?” By my pregnant pause he gathered the answer. “And you call yourself a Witch. Isn’t that Woo-Woo 101? Finding people?”
“I don’t have anything of his.”
Aidan scoffed, sounding like he was rolling his eyes better than any man over three hundred had a right to. “You’re his, dumbass. If you haven’t figured that out yet, you’re dumber than I thought you were, and after our last session, that’s saying something.”
Yep, punching him right in the face the next time I see him.
“Considering I haven’t even kissed your brother, I’d say the possession bit is a little premature, but I’ll try.” I say it trying to act blasé about the fact that Ian is fucking missing, but my tone must venture too far into bored for Aidan’s liking.
“You’ll do better than try, Maxima. You find my brother, or else.” Or else from a Wraith Guardian meant a sight bit more than from just about anyone else. It means he would book me on a one-way ticket straight to Hell if I didn’t find Ian. He’d suck out my soul and eat it.
Literally.
“I’ll find him,” I whisper and then hang up, carefully placing my phone on the coffee table before I smash it.
Ian. I should have looked for him last night. I should have called Aidan sooner. Why didn’t I call Aidan yesterday?
“You happen to have a pendulum in that frankenbag of yours? I need to find someone.”
But when the pendulum finally falls, I find I don’t want to be within a mile of where I know Ian is.
Looking at it from the street, the house seems no different from others on the block. The white, two-story craftsman shouldn’t seem foreboding, but it did. I hadn’t been within fifty feet of my house – a place I used to think of as my sanctuary – in over a month. A cold chill races up my back as I stare at the cerulean front door I’d painstakingly repainted last June, which is a feat in and of itself since it was blisteringly hot for an August night. Denver cooled down considerably at night, but not enough to cause the goose flesh racing up and down my arms.
No.
That was caused by the blind panic that had me poised to run from what used to be my home instead of going inside to rescue Ian from whatever brought him here. There was no way he’d come here on his own. He knew how I felt about the place – as if the ghost of Micah Goode might be waiting in one of the darkened corners to come and snatch me up. But the grass is cut, the flowerbeds weeded, as if someone has been keeping the place up for me. As if I were on vacation or something instead of afraid of a silly pile of bricks.
I don’t want to be here. Not on this street, not on this sidewalk, not anywhere close to here. But Ian is inside, and if I follow my gut – which I was prone to do even though it had brought me nothing but trouble – Ian is in danger or hurt or a prisoner and I didn’t have the luxury of the time a panic attack would take.
A bird’s hair raising shriek has me looking over my shoulder to scan the dark street. The call is close and my eyes drift up to the lamp post where a falcon sits. In Colorado, it isn’t uncommon for falcons to roam, but I’d never seen one in the city, and sure as hell not on my street.
Another shiver races up my spine, focusing my mind to the task at hand. I assess property lines, knowing that the warding that kept people away is long gone. I wonder what someone looking out their window at this hour would think of my getup. Before my shop was firebombed I was in my usual work attire of a tight tank, sailor style pedal pushers, and heels. Now, my hair has fallen from the painstakingly styled victory rolls, my clothes are covered in soot, and somewhere along the way my shoes came off so I had to conjure myself some flats. Plus, the black leather belt with the dagger sheath containing the bone blade doesn’t exactly go with this outfit.
I’ve never been so thankful for nightfall.
Keeping my eyes peeled, I make my way to the front door, hesitating only a moment or twelve before I manage to turn the unlocked knob. Convenient, and creepy as fuck, because while I don’t have my keys, it isn’t like I coded the front door with my fingerprints. Someone wants me to be able to enter, and that just feels icky on a bevy of levels.
Then the door swings open and sitting in the middle of my living room is Ian, bound to one of my dining room chairs. He’s unconscious, battered and bloody, his once-white t-shirt spattered with the rusty brown of dried blood. It feels as if my heart has shriveled up and died in my chest, and I find myself rushing him, sliding on my knees on the hardwood just so I don’t knock him over.
“Ian. Ian, can you hear me?” I pat his face until I realize that I quit patting three pats or so ago and now I’m outright slapping him to get him to wake up.
“Ian!” I shout, shaking him in between untying the ropes that bind him to the chair. But he doesn’t respond, and the only hope I have is the fact that he’s breathing, albeit shallowly.
My brain goes into damage control mode where it offers anywhere from easy to ridiculous ways to solve a problem, and the best I can come up with is to call Aidan.
“Where is he, Max?” Aidan barks down the line as I try to hold Ian’s unconscious body upright in the chair.
“He-he’s at my house,” I shiver, the pain and shock and sheer weight of the day crashing down on me. “I-I can’t get him to you. He’s been knocked out, beaten. His breathing is shallow, and I don’t… I don’t know what to do. Help m—.” I don’t get the word out before the call disconnects and Aidan appears in my living room.
Aidan looks livid – a wickedly sharp sword in his hand glints in the meager light as he scans the room. Without so much as a hello, he grips Ian’s shoulder and seems to think about it for a moment before snatching up my wrist. Aidan does that Wraith-style voodoo smoke out thing and transports us to the brother’s living room. Vomit rises in my throat when we land, me on my hands and knees, and I try not to chuff on Ian’s carpet.
“I swear to the Fates, Maxima, if you don’t get your shit together, so help me…” Aidan trails off through ground teeth as he lifts his brother onto the pool table.
I damn near died on it.
Melody did die on it.
Staggering to my feet, I shuffle over to the table as Aidan cuts open Ian’s bloodstained shirt with trauma shears and starts checking him over.
“What happened to you?”
Resting a hip against the solidness of the table, I ignore his question. “Is he going to be okay? Do I need to do anything?”
“You just stand there and tell me what the fuck happened to you. Had I known you’d look like you’d been drug through a tree backwards, I would have had a bit more sympathy.” He pulls a stethoscope from Ian’s black doctor duffle, pressing it to different spots on Ian’s ribs.
“My problems are less important than your brother’s life, so just focus on him and don’t worry about me.”
Aidan pops the earpiece out of his ear, leveling me with a hard look. “I have to worry about you because for some reason your shit keeps landing my brother in hot water. I have no doubt Ian was handed over to you like a present, gift wrapped and everything. So you’ll tell me exactly what’s going on.”
Forgiving his delivery, the man has a point. Ian has been through one thing after another, and while it always hasn’t been my fault, I certainly don’t help matters. “The Council picked me up last night for the murder of Micah Goode. Sentenced me to death and everything until I reminded them I was an unwilling participant in Micah’s schemes. Then they asked me to kill my father. I said no, and then today my shop was firebombed by a black smoke Demon thing who tried to kill me.”
I didn’t even want to tell him about the blade and the souls I accidentally released. Or the fact that I blew up the Council’s front freaking door. Yeah… Aidan was pissed enough.
“I swear to the Fates I rue the fucking day he met you in that stupid farce of a club. Go to Witch club he said. We’ll meet hot chicks he said,” he grumbles as he check’s Ian’s pupils. “Well, he makes out with a woman who doesn’t even remember him, and I damn near get my ass blasted off in that raid. Seriously. Ian should have listened to Caim and left you alone, but nooooooooo.”
Daughter of Souls & Silence Page 5