That comment only elicited a sneer. “The Santiagos will finally be a power to be reckoned with, instead of a weak clan with an invalid at their head.”
“Oh, so a prima whose mind is completely enslaved by your father is a better alternative?”
“It is the perfect solution.” The curl of Matiás’ lip translated into something that looked suspiciously like a leer. “Besides, she doesn’t seem to mind being with my father. And why should you care? You’re not even human.”
“I am as human as you are,” Levi said calmly. At the same time, he wondered how the Escobar warlock had been able to tell that the man he faced wasn’t strictly a man at all. None of the McAllisters — save Angela, who had special powers of her own — had ever mentioned that his energy felt different from the others in their clan. Not that it mattered at the moment.
“Keep telling yourself that,” Matías replied. “But let’s stop dicking around, shall we? Step away from the portal.”
The inflection of this final command was different from that conversational tone Escobar had previously used. The vowels and consonants blended together in one sonorous wave rolling around in Levi’s head, strangely persuasive. Of course he needed to move away from the portal. The portal needed to be protected.
No. Levi dug his heels into the ground and shook his head, feeling like a dog trying to shake water out of its ears. The violent movement helped to clear some of the brain fog he’d begun to experience.
So that was what it felt like to be under the spell of Matías Escobar’s talent. Levi had been able to resist it, but only because his magical nature made him less susceptible to that treacherous gift than an ordinary mortal would have been. He could see why it was so difficult to fight — Matías’ power made his suggestions seem like the only logical thing to do.
“No, I don’t think so,” Levi said, and once more sent his energy toward the portal, causing it to shrink by a few more inches. All he needed was a little more time —
“Cute trick,” Matías returned. “I think you just proved you’re not really human, pendejo, because there’s no witch or warlock in the world that can withstand me.”
“Are you sure about that? I seem to recall that Caitlin McAllister was able to escape you fairly easily.”
The dark warlock’s black brows drew together. “Only because I was focusing on the other two, and Jorge and Tomas weren’t paying attention. If she was here now, it would be a different story.”
“Lucky for her that she isn’t,” Levi remarked. “But I am, and I have a message for you and your father. Leave the McAllister clan alone.”
“Give me Lucinda back, and maybe we’ll talk.”
From the way Escobar’s gaze shifted away from Levi as he spoke, it seemed clear enough that he would never hold up his end of such a bargain — even if the McAllisters would stoop so low as to barter with someone’s life. Besides, Levi somehow doubted that Matías had the authority to make such a promise. Yes, his powers were quite prodigious, but it was still his father who ruled the Santiago clan now, who had made a slave of their prima.
“No, I don’t think so,” Levi said. “I can’t agree to that, and I’m sure neither Angela nor Connor would accept such a deal, either.”
Hatred blazed in Matías’ dark eyes at the mention of the two people who’d stolen his powers away from him. Clearly, it didn’t matter that he’d recently regained them. The insult and injury would linger for a long time. “Then I don’t think we need to say anything else.”
A wave of his hand, and the charcoal-gray sky turned black overhead. Could it be that a storm was coming in? But Levi knew that the weather never changed on this plane — a ceaseless wind blew, and it was always cold and dry. Nothing lived. Nothing grew.
Then the darkness began to take on shape and form. Those weren’t clouds moving overhead. They were armies of demons, moving in an unholy murmuration that took up the entire sky.
Levi’s ears rang with Matías Escobar’s laughter, even as those demons began to dive toward him.
19
“He’s been away for a long time,” Hayley said anxiously, her gaze moving toward the clock on the far wall. She’d been counting the minutes; Levi had been in his trance — or whatever you wanted to call it — for almost forty-five minutes now.
“Time can move differently on other planes,” Angela replied. She had been watching Levi almost the entire time, but now she shifted her weight to the back of the chair where she sat, and looked over at her husband. “How long was I gone when I went to the world with the shining river?”
Connor tilted his head to one side. Unlike the other times Hayley had seen him, his longish dark hair now lay loose on his shoulders, and it seemed to make the Navajo blood in his features more apparent, accentuating the high cheekbones and the long, sculpted nose. “A little over an hour, I think. I know it felt longer, because I was sweating bullets the whole time, wondering what the hell I was going to do if you didn’t come back.”
Sweating bullets. Yes, that was exactly how this felt, as if every excruciating moment was somehow being carved out of her flesh.
Angela took Connor’s hand, squeezed it lightly. “But I did come back.” Her gaze shifted to Hayley. “And Levi will be back, too. We just have to trust in his talents. He knows what he’s doing.”
The prima sounded so confident. She’d known Levi longer than Hayley had, so maybe she was only telling the truth, wasn’t trying to create hope where there should be none. Hayley prayed that was the case. And since Levi had told them all not to disturb him while he was away on this journey, there wasn’t much any of them could do.
She looked back over at him, at his still features, so perfect, so calm and handsome. There was still color in his cheeks, so even though she couldn’t see his chest rising and falling, she had to tell herself that of course he was alive, that he didn’t move because he was in a trance deep enough to send him far from the very borders of this world. Once he had accomplished what he’d set out to do, he’d return to her. He’d be safe. The McAllisters would be safe.
If she kept telling herself that over and over, maybe she would believe it. For now, all she could was nod and tell the prima, “I hope you’re right.”
Striking out against so many foes seemed impossible. Instead, Levi raised a barrier of shimmering light all around him, not unlike the protective shield that Alex Trujillo was able to conjure as part of his talent. The demons screeching down from overhead slammed into it, black blood spattering everywhere, even as their limp bodies slid to the ground.
Standing a few feet away — but untouched by the demon horde he’d summoned — Matías scowled. “Again,” he called out, and another phalanx of the black creatures dived from the sky, sacrificing themselves against the barrier Levi had conjured.
He felt that one. It was not unlike having multiple mallets swung into his skull, all at the same time. Wincing, he pulled in a deep breath and willed the sensation away as best he could. The barrier held, but if he allowed himself to be distracted by pain, then it might fall away entirely, and he would be unprotected.
“Still feeling invincible?” Matías taunted him, walking in a circle around the little bubble of glowing light. He made a sweeping motion with one hand, and the bodies of the fallen demons were flung off to one side, to be heaped like so much garbage. Obviously, he had little care for how many of his servants he killed, so long as he was ultimately victorious.
Invincible was the last thing Levi considered himself right then. His ears rang, and he ignored that as well. He might not have been born in this body, but he knew how much punishment it could take, and he still had a ways to go. “Your servants should have been warned that they serve a cruel master.”
Matías shrugged. “What, you’re worried about demons now? They exist to serve. And right now their only duty is to take your sorry ass out.”
Those words were followed by another strafing run. Once again the demons thudded into the magical barrier and sli
d away, their dark lives forever extinguished by the shock of their black energy hitting a construct made entirely of light. The pain was so intense, however, that Levi was driven to his knees, where he knelt on the rocky ground and pulled in deep, searing breaths of air, forcing himself to maintain the barrier, although the agony of compelling the magic within him to keep functioning was only slightly less than the physical pain he was experiencing.
Another one of those blows, and he very much feared he wouldn’t be able to hold the barrier any longer. When that happened, the demons would fall upon him and tear him to pieces.
The mental image was so clear, Levi couldn’t help wincing. At the same time, though, another thought came to him.
Matías was obviously confident in the power he held over these demons. But what if Levi could manage to turn them against him?
How, though?
The realization blazed into him like the sun coming up over the horizon. Matías had said the demons existed to serve, but that wasn’t the precise truth. It was more that their natures didn’t allow them to rebel if the correct spells were used to harness their energy. All Levi had to do was wrest that control from Escobar, even for only a minute. That would be long enough. Yes, the other warlock possessed some unique skills, but Levi was fairly certain that he didn’t have the power necessary to protect himself the way Levi had.
One small problem, though — he would have to lift the barrier to cast the spell. It protected him, but at the same time, it kept his magic trapped inside.
That was all right. He was willing to take that risk.
A blink of his mind, and the barrier was gone. As Matías’ eyes widened in surprise, Levi thrust himself to his feet. The words of the spell tumbled from his lips.
Dark above
Dark below
Demons fly
Demons fall
Take the one
Who enslaved you all.
As one, the swirling mass of the demons dived from the sky, aiming toward Matías Escobar with the precision of an army of guided missiles. He swore and began to run — but there was no place for him to run, not with the portal he’d used to reach this plane many yards away. The demons descended, and Escobar screamed, high-pitched shrieks of pain that, mercifully, died away soon enough.
Feeling very weary, Levi turned back toward the portal that had allowed the creatures access to the human world. His head throbbed, and red flashes appeared before his eyes, but he made himself finish the spell, closing off access — if not forever, at least until someone with the requisite skills and raw talent was able to open it once more.
With any luck, that time would not come again for a very long while.
As Levi began to move toward his own portal, the one that would return him to the life he’d left behind, one of the demons descended in front of him. He was very tall, nearly half again Levi’s height, with the same leathery wings of all his kind, but also with a mane of heavy black hair that fell to the center of his back. His true name was older than time, but Levi knew better than to say it out loud. Besides, he wasn’t sure if his human mouth could even form the syllables.
“You have freed us,” the demon said. “Are you not going to make us your army now?”
“I wish for no army,” Levi replied, then added, using the demon’s human-given name, “I only wish to go home, Lord of Chaos.”
“‘Home’?” the demon repeated. “That place is not your home.”
“It is now.” Lifting his head so he might look more or less into the demon’s blood-tinted eyes, Levi went on, “And if you come there again, you will find a new war on your doorstep.”
“It is not a place we would choose to go.” The demon paused, and looked past Levi so he might focus on his otherworldly cohorts. “But it seems that those who would call us there are now dead.”
“You know of no others?” Was it too much to hope that the talent for calling these beings to earth had died with Matías Escobar and his sister? Even now Levi feared that Joaquin still might possess enough of that sinister talent to carry on his dark crusade.
“No. There are none who now walk the earth who can do such a thing.” The Lord of Chaos smiled. With those pointed teeth, and those glowing, blood-red eyes, his visage was not exactly a reassuring sight, and yet Levi still couldn’t help but experience a rush of relief.
“Then may you and your kind live in peace here,” he said.
“I am not sure of that, but at least you will not have to worry about us troubling you.”
Levi could not ask for much more than that. He bowed and walked away, still not sure that the demon lord might not reach out to tear him open with his claws as soon as his back was turned. But the blow never came, and there was the portal, a strange, shimmering fog that beckoned him to return to the world he now called his own.
Back to Hayley.
He stepped into the fog, and left the demons’ otherworld behind.
She knew she shouldn’t cry. It had only been two hours, after all. The Goddess only knew what Levi was going through, in a world she couldn’t begin to imagine, except to do her best to understand that it lay in a universe completely separate from this one.
Problem was, Hayley could feel her eyes stinging, could feel a tear begin to slide from the inner corner of her lower eyelid and slip down the side of her nose. She reached up and wiped it away, then shot a surreptitious look at the prima and primus. Luckily, they were both gazing down at the phone Angela held; Hayley had the impression that they’d been quietly texting with Tobias, who was still at the hospital, keeping watch on Rachel.
She shifted in her chair, trying to ignore the way the hard wood of the unpadded seat had begun to bite into the backs of her thighs. As she held in a sigh, she shifted her gaze back over to Levi.
Hayley’s breath caught.
Had she imagined it?
No, that was definitely a flutter of the dark gold eyelashes that lay against his cheeks. He sucked in a gasp of air, coughed, then laid his hands flat against the bed and pushed himself up to a sitting position as he stared wildly around him, as if not entirely certain of his surroundings.
“Levi!”
She didn’t care that Angela and Connor only sat a few feet away, didn’t stop to think that Levi might need a little longer to get his bearings. All that mattered in that moment was her arms around him, the sensation of his warm body next to hers. A single second of hesitation, and then he was returning the embrace, his arms encircling her and holding her close.
“Hayley,” he murmured, his lips against her hair, and then her cheek. At last his mouth touched hers, strong, hungry, reestablishing the connection between them. Clearly, he wasn’t concerned about displaying that sort of intimacy in front of the prima and primus.
They both got up from their chairs, their words tumbling over each other. “Did you do it?” “Are we safe?”
A long pause, and then Levi gently let go of Hayley, although he kept his fingers clasped with hers so she couldn’t rise from the bed where she sat. “The demons won’t trouble us again. The portal has been closed.”
Angela’s eyes shut, and she whispered, “Thank the Goddess.”
Connor didn’t speak, but from the way he nodded, his entire expression one of grim satisfaction, it was clear that he was relieved as well.
“There’s more,” Levi added, and Hayley stared at him, worry starting to overtake the sensations of relief that had begun to flood through her.
“What else?” she asked quickly. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
“No. That is, I suffered a few blows in the otherworld, but they haven’t traveled with me here.” He let go of one of her hands so he could trail his fingers over her hair. Such tenderness in that touch, but also a sort of wonder, as if he’d feared he wouldn’t be able to do such a thing ever again. His gaze flickered from her to Angela and Connor. “Matías Escobar was there.”
“In the otherworld?” Angela inquired, her tone sharp.
�
�Yes. He was the one summoning the demons. Like sister, like brother, I suppose. We…fought.”
“And?”
“He’s dead. He won’t trouble any of us again.”
Angela reached over and took Connor’s hand. Her expression was difficult to read. Was that happiness in her eyes…or doubt?
“It’s true,” Levi added. “I set his own demons upon him.”
That must have been something to see…from a safe distance. Hayley wondered what had gone through Matías Escobar’s mind during those last few moments, when he saw the creatures he’d been using as his own servants suddenly turn on him. Had he recognized his defeat, or had he been defiant to the end?
“It’s not that we don’t believe you,” Connor said. “It’s more that…can you think of anything more guaranteed to piss off Joaquin Escobar than killing his only son?”
A long silence followed that question. It wasn’t that they didn’t all know the answer — it was that no one wanted to acknowledge such a bleak reality out loud.
“I had no choice,” Levi told him.
“We all know that. And believe me, I’m sure everyone will be relieved to know that Matías Escobar has departed this mortal coil…or whatever coil he was on when he died. But we also have to be prepared to face the consequences.”
Hayley gripped Levi’s hand. “Well, can we do that after Levi has had a chance to recover? It’s not like he just got back from a walk in the park.”
“Of course,” Angela replied, giving her husband a significant look. “We need to go and let the elders know what’s happened. Why don’t you two get some alone time, and then we can all regroup once Levi feels like he’s up to it?”
“I’m fine — ” Levi began, and Hayley shook her head.
“Swear to the Goddess, Levi, if you don’t let me baby you for at least five minutes, I’m going to be seriously annoyed.”
He chuckled then, and lifted his shoulders, as if to indicate defeat. “All right. I promise I’ll allow a little pampering…but not too much.”
Deep Magic (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 13) Page 24