Wind buffeted her, but the Magic Eaters did not strike.
She risked a glance.
They wheeled away for another pass.
Isa scrambled to the griffin’s back. She hadn’t ridden a horse in years, but her muscles remembered. She found her seat. Her knees gripped beneath the griffin’s wings.
He launched into the sky.
Squeaking in surprise and dismay, she slid. Clamping her knees on surging muscles kept her seated. She scooted back into position.
He swept them into the cloud of Magic Eaters and began snagging Uriel’s minions out of the air with his claws, ripping them open with his beak, and swallowing their hearts.
She suppressed the urge to protect him. This was his world. What she knew about magic applied only in her world. Another rule for her rule book? Later. She concentrated instead on staying seated, on learning to anticipate the heave and surge and dive of flight. As she started to get the hang of keeping her balance, she surveyed the battlefield below.
Uriel’s silver power pulsed, calling Magic Eaters out of the ruins. Infernal corpses littered the ground outside Uriel’s shield.
Isa gasped. Finding out the Infernals belonged to Murmur hadn’t softened her heart toward the manic little abominations. Only weeks ago, Daniel and Uriel had sent one of the creatures into her apartment, where it had tried to take everyone and everything apart. Yet here in Murmur’s world, they’d focused their murderous bent solely upon Uriel.
She needed the foul creatures, and from her point of view, they desperately needed to learn guerrilla warfare.
Murmur had told her to use his army. How was she supposed to communicate with them, much less command them?
“Can we help them?” she asked the griffin.
He chirruped.
A hint of caramel eased the bitter taste of smoke in her mouth. Ah. She wouldn’t command anything. Murmur would. Through her.
“Get out of the open,” she said, floating the words on her magic combined with that hint of Murmur’s. The griffin’s razor-edged power picked up her intent. Translating it into something Infernals could understand? “Lead them into the rubble. Ambush them from the rocks. Divide and conquer.”
The taste of caramel strengthened; so did the draw on her power.
The churn of Infernals battering themselves against Uriel’s shield scattered into the rubble surrounding the cratered open space.
Uriel barked a triumphant laugh.
Magic Eaters harried the Infernals, pulling up at the edge of the rubble field.
Isa’s mount cackled and plucked two more of them out of the sky. White feathers puffed and spiraled to the ground. The discarded corpses followed.
Below them, an Infernal clambered to the top of a wall, dancing, grinning a toothy smile.
A Magic Eater took the bait.
Shrieking with maniacal glee, the Infernal threw itself flat. A pair of its compatriots jumped the ill-fated Magic Eater, ripping with clawed hands before it ever hit the ground.
More corpses fell from the griffin’s claws.
Malicious, bloodthirsty magic surged beneath her knees. He was consuming magic with every heart he snapped up. Overloading.
“Wait,” she said.
He chuckled and snapped up another heart.
Isa clenched sweaty fists against the gleaming feathers. She had to silence Uriel’s call for reinforcements. A strangle bind went together easily. Dealing with the energy flooding her in Murmur’s world, she desperately needed a mundane image—a noose—to anchor her binding spell. She’d always needed ordinary references to allow her to shape tenuous energy into something that could have an effect in her world, like the spear she’d used to destroy the hydra.
She’d consider adding it to the rule book—magic is limited by the bounds of what humans can know—but as far as she knew, that was her experience of power. Not anyone else’s.
Isa braided her spell together with the energy of her binding ink. Power spilled into her grasp despite the burgeoning tug on her. Murmur’s army, if that’s what the griffin and Infernals were, accustomed to feeding on his smoldering dark magic, seemed to be developing a taste for hers.
Dizziness rocked her.
She leaned forward against the griffin’s neck and attempted to control the wide-open channels routing energy through her system. She’d feed Murmur’s army. She’d feed him. But if she wanted to save any of them, she needed some of her power for herself. The buzzing in her head diminished. She straightened.
Infernals rampaged through the ruins, taking her initial suggestion of ambush to heart and being endlessly inventive at luring Magic Eaters to their doom. The twiggy, disjointed-looking creatures scuttling like rats, baiting Uriel’s army, and mowing them down in a flurry of blood and feathers. Uriel stood, vile, twisted words crawling from his ink-stained lips, summoning more of the winged creatures.
She had to stop him. Her spell coiled in her grasp, not quite as manifest as an actual length of rope, but the image gave Isa’s magic enough form in the world that she’d be able to wrap the spell around Uriel’s neck and strangle him into silence without killing him. The trick would be landing the bind before he realized what she intended.
“I need to get this on him,” she whispered to the griffin. “Can you take me close?”
She read reluctance in the sudden tension in the muscles beneath her knees and seat. He didn’t want to go closer.
“I can’t save Murmur without shutting Uriel up.”
His beak clacked in irritation, but he tucked his wings against his body.
Hot air rushed past, pushing her backward, and tearing water from her eyes. She jolted forward on the griffin’s back when he angled his wings to brake. Her spine tried to hammer through her skull.
Blinking to clear her vision, Isa threw a flicker of gold flame at Uriel’s shield.
Magic Eaters, those that were left, rose en mass from the ruins. They turned, orange eyes vivid in those white faces and arrowed for her position.
She hooked one arm around the griffin’s neck, feathers sliding beneath her hand, and made herself as flat as possible between his beating wings.
Her bit of flame hit Uriel’s silver shell.
His shield shattered like glass.
The griffin dodged and turned, snatched one Magic Eater out of the sky. Then he screamed and faltered.
Isa cried out. “Just a little closer!”
He sank.
A Magic Eater struck right behind her. Isa registered the impact, heard the terrible sound of flesh ripping. Her heart thudded high in her throat, but she kept her gaze fastened on Uriel.
He faced them, tracking.
“Damn it, I need a better distraction,” she muttered.
Ink black power shot out of the sarcophagus.
It rocked the griffin.
Her, too. It looked like the silver membrane trapping Murmur had weakened. She didn’t care how or why. The touch of Murmur’s magic buoyed her and the griffin. He swung and bit a Magic Eater in half.
Uriel’s upturned face jerked away from her. He stared at the sarcophagus. And hesitated.
Isa cast her noose. The spell settled around his neck. “Got him!”
Muscle bunched and strained beneath her.
They climbed.
Uriel shouted. Silver flashed, engulfing them in searing cold.
Screaming, the griffin slid sideways in the sky.
Isa lurched, every inch of exposed skin numb from Uriel’s counterattack.
The griffin overcorrected before leveling out.
Heart in her throat, her retinas seared by Uriel’s attack, she inched back into her seat. Blinking did nothing to clear her vision until she loosed a trickle of magic to wash the silver imprint from her eyes. Shivering, Isa scanned the battlefield.
The last
few remaining Magic Eaters pursued them.
Infernals capered in the ruins, scaling walls, and diving from them like they were at a frat party rather than fighting for Murmur’s life.
The silver sheen holding Murmur in his prison had vanished.
Elation burned the air from her lungs. She shoved power at the simmering, ragged flags of shadow and midnight overflowing the stone box.
Murmur roared.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Uriel bellowed a set of words that ripped through Isa’s sternum.
Black erupted from the box.
Smoke, caramel, and sulfur coated her taste buds, then swamped her senses. She choked on them. A tendril of black snaked into her psyche. It expanded, squeezing her against the confines of her skin and bone. Painfully.
Uriel laughed. Shrill. Unhinged.
Silver power slammed Murmur into Isa’s body, psyche, and magic—cramming him into the too small space of her. Uriel. Forcing Murmur into the prison of Isa’s body.
Agony tore her. And him.
“Isa!” Murmur shouted.
Unbidden, boiling gold flashed through her, pushing back, protesting the forced invasion.
“No!” she shrieked, pulling back on power. He was welcome. No matter the cost. Terror for him tempered the magic defending her from someone she’d become hopelessly vulnerable to.
When he’d been tattooed on her in the first place, it had been a piece at a time. She’d had time to stretch, to accommodate the too large creature being introduced. This was a gross violation of every law of physics. They were two solid objects occupying the same space at the same time. No time for integration. No mingling of identities and essences. This was Alice drinking the growth potion and taking the roof off a house.
Except it was Murmur bursting the seams of Isa’s body.
Skin split. Twig bones snapped.
Murmur and his superheated magic ruptured her psyche while parts of him broke off and crumbled. His howl of torment burst her eardrums from within. She knew she screamed but couldn’t hear it.
Isa lost her grip on the faltering griffin. He sidled sideways, trying to unseat her? Trying to stay beneath her? Didn’t matter.
She fell.
She and Murmur flailed in an ocean of pain until impact. She shattered.
Agony flashed to nothing. Not the absence of pain. Not numbness with its attendant pins and needles. Nothing.
Breathing was optional. Wasn’t it?
So, it seemed, was a heartbeat. The pounding of blood in her veins died.
Uriel had won.
Murmur had been right.
She was no match for his nemesis. Worse. She’d weakened Murmur to the point that he was no match for him.
Uriel would consume her world and everyone she loved.
Her lungs hitched, whether in protest over the lack of oxygen or in reflexive sorrow, she didn’t know.
Heat, wet and ripe with decay, pressed Isa into the ground. Birds chattered unseen in foliage that could not keep glaring sunlight out of her eyes. Leaves rustled as spider monkeys shrieked and chased one another in conflict over a morsel of fruit.
No. That was wrong. She was in Murmur’s world.
The scent of rot filled her nose. But she wasn’t breathing. How? Xibalba. Of course. Murmur’s hellish world would be a gateway to the realm of the Mayan dead.
She flashed on the vision the gods had given her. Uriel cutting a door from Isa’s chest. Isa sacrificing Uriel only to have him turn into Murmur. Was it the last flashes of intellect before the lights went out for good? Understanding drawn from passing out of the realm of the living and into the realm of the dead?
It didn’t matter. Isa finally grasped what the gods of Xibalba had tried to show her. Sacrifice herself to stop Uriel and she’d end up sacrificing Murmur, too. Comprehension came too late.
“No!” a pair of petulant voices she shouldn’t be able to hear thundered.
She knew that slap of rotting meat on rotting meat and the stink. Hun-Came and Vucub-Came.
“Go back,” Hun-Came said in a tone that tried to cleave her skull. “We aren’t done with you.”
“Few ever decipher our messages. We have need of one who can hear and understand our words. You are a powerful priestess,” Vucub-Came said. “Powerful.” He drew the word out in a bloodthirsty arc that swooped around her still heart.
Fear clutched her throat. Her jungle vision dissolved into darkness.
Murmur’s groan cleaved her skull. “Heal.”
Didn’t she need blood flow for that? A heart that beat? A will that wasn’t leaking out of the body that lay burst upon the ground like overripe fruit?
Far, far away, a coyote howled.
A gold spark lit the inside of her skull.
The harsh, raucous caw of a raven echoed through her insides.
Tiny, red-hot claws and scales climbed the ruins of her shattered spine. How could she feel that? How could she hear any of it?
“Heal.”
Her voice? Murmur’s? Her teachers?
Caramel and smoke on her tongue. A whiff of sulfur. Winking on and off, the golden fireflies of her magic rose into the darkness cradling her.
Black depths of the earth heat mounted, subsuming her, melting, and reforming her will. Her sunshine power went supernova.
HEAL.
The multivoiced command struck her body like lightning.
Her body arched hard in the rubble, shattered bones grinding, spilled blood, and liquefied organs screaming against the offense done them.
Black twined through the conflagration, shaping the agony.
Healing.
She knew how to do that. Shaping a zap of sun-fire, she started her own heart. It slammed against her knitting ribs as if seeking escape. Blood and hurt pulsed through her veins. Her lungs heaved.
Why did she still smell rotting meat?
Murmur pushed the air out of her lungs in a rasping, pained breath.
Magic flooded her, and him, mending. Soothing. Exciting the pulse of blood in her—she turned her power upon Murmur, too—their veins.
He was back. Internal to her.
“Don’t waste your energy on me,” he murmured, shifting as if trying to find a more comfortable fit within the physical confines of her.
“Stop me,” she said.
“Don’t need help.”
“You’re getting it anyway.” Her open eyes registered motion so she ordered them into focus.
Shimmering gold, shot through with sinuous fumaroles of shadow, streamed from her body.
She sat up.
Infernals swarmed her.
Isa gagged and panicked. She batted one of the creatures away.
It bounded right back, cackling.
“Stop!” Murmur commanded. His voice reverberated inside her skull.
She winced.
“They’re mine.”
“So you said. Why couldn’t you control the one Daniel and Uriel sent against us in the apartment?”
“Different worlds, different rules.”
So she was discovering.
A shriek overhead yanked her attention skyward. Only three Magic Eaters remained, circling in attack formation above her.
One dove.
Isa threw herself to the ground.
The burnt feather breath from the Magic Eater pulling out of its dive rushed over her.
Giggling, the Infernals leaped and tore the screaming creature from the air.
Isa straightened and scanned for Uriel. A muddy hump a yard away caught and held her gaze. She squinted. The image resolved. Broken feathers. Wings splayed and twisted. Tawny fur smeared with blood and mud.
“Oh no,” she gasped. Acid chewed at her breastbone.
Flinching, Murmur fumbled for her eyesigh
t. He missed.
“Your griffin.” She scrambled on legs uncertain they wanted to carry her to where the creature lay, her breath catching on her chant of, “Please, please.”
Infernals followed, scaling the griffin’s body.
Reflexive horror insisted she sweep them away.
That they lifted their faces to track the remaining Magic Eaters stayed her impulse. She laid a hand on the griffin’s ragged hip. One of his front paws had been severed. It dangled from a thin band of skin. Blood seeped from his nostrils.
His ribs still rose and fell in short, pained gasps that tripped her heart into frightened pounding.
As if touch gave Murmur sight, his grief swamped her, overflowing her body in a black wave.
Crooning nonsense to the griffin, to Murmur, and maybe to herself, Isa grappled magic to hand. His power, fueled by impending loss, writhed in her grasp. She didn’t try to tame it. Instead, she turned it loose inside the griffin’s body, along with her own.
The gold of her magic shot through with fractals of Murmur’s ebony rose around them. Sweat broke out on her body. The breath she took cooked her lungs. Still she poured energy into the griffin.
Murmur hooked a claw into her will, hauling himself into her head and her heart. He wove his intent to heal into hers until she could no longer tell where his began and hers ended.
“Now.”
They released the power bucking in their etheric hands.
Wounds closed. The griffin’s severed paw knit into place.
Isa drove magic into the griffin’s heart, stabilizing the fluttering, failing beat.
The griffin convulsed.
Infernals spilled to the ground, giggling.
His head lifted. Shaking out newly functional wings, the griffin surged to his feet and screamed a raucous, ferocious challenge. He threw himself into the sky.
Murmur hissed.
A warning roll of silver drew Isa to her feet to face the threat.
Uriel. Casting.
Her lip curled. She hadn’t pulled her binding noose tight enough to strangle him silent. Time to remedy . . .
Deep inside, a razor of silver ice traced the outline of a door. Her soul shivered.
Bound by Ink (A Living Ink Novel) Page 32