by D. G. Swank
Then she let out another scream, and once again, the skin on my own arms felt as though it had been sliced open.
When I looked down this time, there was blood trickling down over my palms.
Phoebe! Rowan shouted in my head. What’s happening?
I ignored her. I wasn’t even sure what was happening. How could I explain it to her?
I gritted my teeth, knowing I was strong enough to sustain a little damage. Unlike Celeste, who had already been through hell these past several days.
Crouching, I followed the pull around the house, staying near the foundation. I had no idea whether the glamour I’d attempted to cast was actually helping me blend in, but it ultimately didn’t matter. I was going to my sister, no matter what.
A big, booming laugh, with the same deep timbre as Bran’s, floated through one of the busted-out windows in the back. “I can’t believe you brought her right to me! Just like that. Baby brother, you are too soft for females. Always were.”
My stomach twisted and flipped at the certainty that Bran had been wrong about his brother. Donall wasn’t some weak mage panting and begging at the Dark Set’s bootheels—he had done this.
No matter what Donall thought, his brother wasn’t in on any ruse.
At least, that’s what I told myself before Bran replied with a dismissive laugh.
“It was easy to find you. Too easy.” Brandon’s smooth voice felt like a smack to the face. “You didn’t think to put better protection spells on the book that holds the most powerful secrets known to witchkind? Some Druid wannabe sensed it and told Gwen.”
Donall laughed. “I planted that lead for Gwen. It was much too easy.”
Brandon was silent for a moment, then said, “Clever.”
My stomach heaved, but I sucked in cool, clean Kansas air through my nose, keeping myself from retching. He’d claimed he was falling in love with me. He’d been so solicitous about my well-being all along. I wanted to believe in him, but a voice in my head whispered I barely knew him, that he had ties to the Dark Set, however flimsy.
He’d given me plenty of reasons not to trust him, yet I kept lapping up his reassurances like a starving kitten at a bowl of fresh milk.
What a damned fool.
“Yo, Don,” a man said. “We gonna use this bitch’s blood to open the book or what?”
I frowned. They had Celeste’s blood and Rowan’s, and they knew I was here, presuming I was waiting in the car like the good girl I was supposed to be. Waiting to be slaughtered.
Run, everything inside me screamed. If I ran, they couldn’t open the book. They couldn’t unleash dark magic upon the world. But my feet froze to the ground. I couldn’t leave my baby sister.
“One minute,” Donall said in annoyance.
The new guy seemed irritated. “Look, we’re happy your brother showed up with the second Whelan and all, but you’re wasting your time on him. He’s nothing but a Council watchdog. We should kill him now.”
A sudden stillness fell over the farmhouse, one that lifted all of the hairs on my arms. There were at least two Dark Set mages in there, and there were likely more. How were we going to do this?
How was I going to do this, if Bran fell victim to the bonds of family after all?
In the loneliness of that cool dark night, it occurred to me that Brandon and I were both facing a choice—family or duty. I was choosing family. Would he choose the same?
A moment later, dark spellwork thickened the air. Clouds gathered in the sky and thunder rumbled, but it couldn’t quite conceal a scream of pure, blood-curdling pain that sounded male from within the farmhouse.
Holy hells, had Donall hurt his own brother? Could I save Brandon and Celeste and the book? Did I want to save Brandon?
My heart stuck in my throat and I cast a quick amplifying spell to hear better.
“Question me or my brother again and you’ll get worse,” Donall whispered in a voice that promised it was a bad idea. “Heal his faithless ass. I can’t afford to be short a pair of hands for the ritual. Not after Markus defied me. I had to kill him.” He said it as an afterthought.
Brandon laughed, a distant, cold, unfamiliar sound. “Nicely done, brother. You’ve been practicing.”
Relief washed through me that it wasn’t Brandon, quickly followed by disgust. If Brandon was playing his brother, he was very convincing.
Donall responded with a cackle filled with evil underscored by exhaustion. “Practicing. Sure. You could call it that.”
Underneath my pain, confusion, and hurt, I couldn’t help but wonder what that meant. Bran had said his brother wasn’t a particularly strong or talented mage, but what I’d overheard in the past five minutes suggested otherwise.
“The Book of Sindal is the key to the resurgence of power and respect for males in Valeria. To us assuming our rightful place,” Donall ranted. “Magic should be tended like a meticulously planned, well-kept garden, not a field of wildflowers. We can’t leave the preservation and development of our talents to pure chance. Especially since so many witches seem to be getting stronger by the generation without even trying.”
“What do you mean, the key?” Brandon questioned. “Have you found a way to open the book?”
“If you’re really on board with me, brother, we could be unstoppable. I wasn’t sure until you picked up the trail I laid down. You came so quickly, it gave me hope that you’d join me.”
Heavy shoes stomped against creaky floorboards and Donall’s voice lowered. His words renewed my belief—my hope—that Bran was playing along, looking for an opening. At the very least, he hadn’t been in on any grand scheme from the start.
I bit my lip. But family was family. And I was a woman he barely knew.
As my mind whirled, a stab of pain shot straight to my gut, and Celeste screamed again. She was just around the corner, and I only knew one thing to be true in that instant—I had to be with her. I could get her out of this. I focused on my ring charging myself with Grandma Imogene’s elemental power and preparing to do battle.
As I rounded the corner of the house, the bond tugged on me harder and harder with every second. Celeste’s whimpers were unmistakably hers, and though they tore my heart in two, I found a glimmering sense of gratitude that at least she was still alive.
I snuck into the house through a rickety screen door lazily flapping open and halfway shut in the wind. A few more steps, and I would be there. In frantic whispers, Celeste begged whoever was putting her through this hell to stop, and I breathed a sigh of measured relief. There was still time to save her, to undo this, to…
I turned the corner, hands poised to send whatever I could flying at Celeste’s torturer, only to find my poor sister all alone, tied up and restrained in the middle of a huge pentacle on the rotting floorboards. She gasped at the noise of my footsteps, and laboriously turned her head to me.
“Phoebe,” she rasped. “No. Get out of here…”
In a second, I was on my knees beside her, frantically working at the bindings holding her down, but they refused to budge. They were magical, and I felt stupid for not considering that possibility. Her skin was sliced in three spots on each arm, letting a small but steady stream of blood drip onto the floor below. Runes of some kind—I’d never seen them before, or so it seemed at first glance—were scratched into the floor inside the pentacle. At least one Druid was involved, just like I’d thought, but it would take a good amount of research to find out what Donall had coerced them into casting.
Right now, we didn’t have time for that. Celeste had lost a lot of blood, and now that I was near her, the cuts her suffering had slashed into my own arms flowed more freely. Our blood dripped together, mingling, onto the floorboards and parts of the rune began to light up as though our blood had turned to liquid gold.
That couldn’t be good.
“Bee, it’s a trap,” Celeste said. “The rune draws all of our blood together—” Celeste’s frantic whisper turned into a weak cough, and she went limp,
as pale as a ghost.
I tapped into Grandmother Corlew’s telekinesis, concentrating hard as I focused all of my energy on loosening the ropes that magically held her down. It might be a trap, but I couldn’t leave her here. I felt a moment of triumph when I freed her right arm, but it was fleeting. My entire body was slowly pulled into the air.
“Phoebe Whelan.” Donall’s gravelly voice reverberated through the small, empty room. “So glad you got our invitation.”
My body went as stiff as a board. Invisible hands pushed my shoulders back until I lay flat in the air. My body rose higher before dropping onto the farmhouse floor beside Celeste.
My feet were next to her head, and in the next breath, my left arm was strapped to her right, the blood weeping from our wounds mashed together.
I looked up to see Donall and four other mages wearing the black cloaks that had become so familiar. Outside the house, the haunting, bleak cawing of crows filled the air.
By the door stood another cloaked figure, but I could see his eyes. Bran. The panic I saw there only proved what I already knew.
We were so totally screwed.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Stay calm.
My heart jolted in shock as Brandon’s pleading voice soaked into my brain, not spoken aloud but felt all the same. I felt my mind and my heart respond. My breathing slowed and slowly, intentionally, I retook control of my body. The spell Donall or one of his men had cast to hold me down had been created in haste and already frayed around the edges. One quick draw on either of my ancestral powers would break me free.
For now—outnumbered and still unsure where this was going—I stayed put.
“Phoebe, you should have gone,” my sister whispered.
“Not leaving you,” I mouthed back.
“Aw, isn’t that sweet,” crooned Donall as he stood between us and then crouched down, peering into our faces with overblown feigned sympathy.
Brandon sent me another thought. Stay calm, and I’ll get us all out of this.
Easy for you to say, you’re standing upright with no opened veins, I shot back, marveling a little at the strength of the recently formed bond between us.
Brandon moved to Celeste’s other side, crouching down beside her. “So the rune really does all the work?”
“The Druids are good for more than one thing, as it turns out. I wasn’t expecting to need blood from all three of the guardians to open the book, but nobody said asserting dominance over the magical world would be easy, did they?” Donall laughed at his own stupid joke. “Anyway, the rune uses their coven bond to open wounds on all three of them. And since you’ve so conveniently brought Phoebe here, we should be able to get started.”
Brandon’s gaze held mine for half a breath. Then his eyes raked over Celeste’s bleeding form. Her eyes were drifting shut now, and her lips were barely moving with inaudible whispers.
I wondered how long it would take until she bled out. If I’d come too late to save her, I’d never forgive myself.
“What about the third?” Brandon asked.
Donall lifted a vial attached to a leather cord around his neck. “It’s not much, but Gage here was able to get it before your goons at the farmhouse realized something was going on.”
My stomach sank. The vial was small—far less than what had been siphoned from Celeste and myself—and I had no idea whether it would be enough.
“If all you had to do was stick the Book of Sindal under the runes and let blood run on them, why couldn’t you do that at the sisters’ farm? Then I wouldn’t have had to drive halfway across the goddamn country to be here for it.”
It was the half-second pause in Donall’s reply that told me something was wrong. Slowly, he walked around Celeste’s head, gripped Brandon’s collar, and dragged him up so they were face-to-face. Brandon was shorter than Donall by a few inches, and Donall’s strength was on full display when Brandon’s toes dragged against the floor.
“Surely you remember I inherited my empathic talents from our dear mother, just like you did. Or did you forget you’re not such a special golden boy after all?”
“What are you talking about?” Brandon demanded.
“I can read your mind, baby brother, despite your efforts to keep me out. You’re busy trying to figure out a way to save your little slut, not join the right side of history.” Donall flicked a finger and one of the mages stepped up to his side. Bran slowly rose off the floor, his eyes bulging with pain. “You always underestimated me, brother. You thought I was nothing. And now your superiority complex is going to get you killed.”
With that, Bran flew across the room, crashed into the far wall, and crumpled to the ground with a sickening crunch.
I felt the pain rocket through Bran’s body as he was tossed about like a ship in a storm. His head flopped onto the floor and he was clearly unconscious.
I held back a sob as I raised my free arm with the ring, keeping my mind on Bran and my sister. If Donall had read Brandon’s mind that easily, surely he could also read mine.
“That’s what happens when you live a charmed life, Phoebe Whelan,” Donall intoned. “You don’t stop to consider all the ways people could foil your plans. Stomp on your territory. Ruin your life.”
Bran groaned. His eyes blinked as he regained consciousness, giving me a moment’s relief.
Then Donall strode over to Celeste and me like he was coming to examine a painting in a museum. He tipped his head to the side and rolled the vial that still hung from his neck between his thumb and his index finger.
He couldn’t dump that out. No matter what, the Book of Sindal had to remain locked.
I focused on Grandma Imogene’s bones and hair, begging her to help me.
An ancestor from a mile away heard me, then called to an ancestor buried several miles from her. The chain continued until I heard Josie’s voice inside my head.
I knew you’d need me. What took you so long to ask?
How? She had to be at least twenty miles away. Up until now, I’d never successfully borrowed power from an ancestor more than a mile away.
Sisterhood, Josie said. Those bastards maimed my baby sister and took me from her in death. I won’t let them take yours, and there are plenty others of us who want to help too. Hold on, because I suspect this is gonna hurt like a son of a bitch.
“You don’t have to do this, Donall,” Brandon ground out. He squirmed on the floor, trying to sit up, clearly still in a lot of pain. “They’ll give their blood willingly. They’ll help, if you just let them—”
“And then what? I’d still have to share the power with some filthy, entitled witches. Look how weak they are, Brandon. They can’t handle this much power. When you’ve spent years biding your time, setting things in motion, gathering talent…that’s the kind of organization, the kind of ambition, that deserves to wield the power of the Book of Sindal. Not some little girls who got grandfathered in.”
My eyes never left the vial. I used the time Bran had bought me to gather strength, to summon energy from the world around me. I felt Josie’s power, along with the power of fifteen of my other ancestors, flood my veins.
Now! Josie shouted in my head.
And then, before Donall Cassidy had a clue what was coming, I unleashed the magic, and everything went black.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I came to in a flash, shaking the fuzziness out of my head and begging blood to rush in to take its place. I’d never felt that much power before, never experienced such an intense surge.
I looked around and saw the Dark Set mages laid out on the floor. It was impossible to tell whether they were breathing, but my sister was still okay.
Despite the shaking feeling in my limbs, the power thrummed deep in my veins, looking for another outlet.
We’re not done yet, Josie said.
Movement on my right drew my attention, and I tipped my head around to find Donall restraining his brother with magical bonds that felt as strong as anyone in the Midd
le Ages could have dreamed up.
He’d used a spell to physically fuse Bran’s lips shut, and the macabre sight would have made me throw up if I weren’t so focused on figuring out how to get us out of this.
Bran’s fists were clenched, but he wasn’t fighting. Good. He was taking the advice he’d just given me.
“What really baffles me, though, is that these witches have no drive, no ambition,” Donall continued, apparently sure I’d knocked myself out with my own power.
Which was true, but he still shouldn’t have been so cocky. Hopefully, it would be his downfall.
“They discover a talent, they develop it, and instead of trying to get more, they decide to share their powers with their coven,” he simpered. “It’s like we’re at a tea party, isn’t it? Would you like some cake? I’d love some.” The way in which he mimicked little girls’ voices made me wonder if Donall was mentally all there.
“The Dark Set are always playing the long game. Gathering resources, putting ourselves first, setting our eyes on the prize and never letting up until we’ve achieved our goals. These Druids understand the way it should be. They crave more power, and they know how to draw it from the land, consolidate it, and wield it. The male tradition of magic, you may remember our dear departed father teaching us, is to conquer. The time has come for us to claim our rightful place in society—at the top, with witches and everyone else answering to us. Our power. Our fearlessness. Our pride in who we are.”
Panic filled Bran’s eyes and he began to struggle against his restraints. I tried to keep my eyes on him, though my vision was fading in and out. Vaguely, I registered blood dripping from my arms and pooling onto the floor. The loss was draining my power along with my life.