Cast into Darkness

by Janet Tait

  Grayson pulled a chair over to the edge of the circle and sat, his eyes steady on her. Victor leaned against a carved wooden cabinet on the far wall. Grayson had changed his shirt, but his pants still had flecks of blood on them—her father’s.

  She stood, reaching out to touch the faint shimmer rising up from the circle stones.

  “Kate, don’t—” Grayson began.

  As her fingers brushed the shimmer, a flurry of sparks went up from the contact point.

  “Ow! That stings.” She snatched her hand back, glaring at her uncle.

  “I set the circle’s barrier up to hold you,” Victor said. “You can’t get out or use magic. Don’t bother trying. It’ll do more than sting next time.” He had that look of his—halfway between a smile and a sneer—that told her that he didn’t care what she thought.

  She turned her glare to Victor. “I’m fine now. There’s no reason to cage me like an animal.”

  Victor cocked his head and stared down his nose at her. “Just a safety measure, ’til we know what we’re dealing with.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Kate asked.

  “We’re not sure what’s happened to you, and we need to find out.” Grayson got up and went to the cabinet behind him. He ran his palm over a latch on the door and concentrated, and it popped open. He reached in and pulled an object out of its dark recesses: a filigree silver ball about the size of a grapefruit, studded with chunks of what looked like topaz.

  “Victor thinks you might still be possessed, either by the stone or by someone or something else.”

  She tugged her robe tighter around her. “Is that why I attacked Dad?” Kate searched Victor’s face for a reaction. Nothing. She wouldn’t want to play poker against him.

  “I don’t know,” Victor said.

  “How did I levitate in the bathroom? Any explanation for that?”

  Victor gave her his silent stare.

  “Do you remember anything I taught you about possession?” Grayson asked.

  “Um…”

  Grayson frowned. “Possession’s not an easy feat to achieve. Magic—the way we do it now—can’t affect the mind very much. But ancient magic—such as the stone’s—is a different story altogether. From what we can tell from our forensic reconstruction—”

  “Your what?”

  “I cast a spell that showed me what happened to you and Brian from the time you entered the Sanctum until Brian died.”

  “So you know what killed him.”

  Victor’s hand cut through the air. “Later.”

  “But—”

  “Now we’re worried about you,” Victor said. “And I’ve seen the sort of thing the stone did to you before. Possession.”

  She remembered what the stone had done in the Sanctum—forcing her to look at it, taking control of her actions, making her bring it into the circle, trigger some kind of spell.

  She thought back over the past twenty-four hours. When had the stone first begun calling the shots? Had it only controlled her that last time, in the Sanctum? Or yesterday afternoon, when she’d looked into its jet-black depths and lost the whole day? Had she been its puppet from the very first time she’d touched it, when it stung her and she’d lost a half hour in the theater dressing room? It certainly made sure she hadn’t remembered it changing color. She shivered.

  Was the stone still dominating her? She didn’t think so. She felt its absence, like the hole formed by a newly pulled tooth she was used to running her tongue over. She kept going to the place in her mind where it used to be but found nothing there.

  “I know you don’t have any reason to believe me, but I don’t think the stone is still controlling me.”

  “Why not?”

  She shrugged. “Now that it’s gone, I can feel it’s gone. It’s hard to explain.”

  “I need more than your say-so, princess.” He took the silver ball from Grayson and gave each yellow stone a light touch. The ball lit up with a soft glow from inside, the luminescence spreading to each stone. He tossed it, underhanded, at Kate.

  The silver ball came straight for her. She ducked, but it swerved right before it reached her, veering off to circle her. It spun around Kate three times, just outside the circle stones, leaving a trail of golden light in the air behind it. The ball stopped, hovering in the air to the left of Victor, and its topaz stones dimmed, awaiting his next order like one of his obedient security guards.

  “This isn’t going to hurt, is it?” Kate asked.

  “No,” Grayson said. “Victor is going to ask you questions. You answer them. That’s all.”

  Kate eyed the silver ball, floating in front of her. “What does it do?”

  “The Verity Globe tells us if anything is influencing your answers.”

  “Like a lie detector?”

  “No.” Victor broke in. “Look, Grayson can tell you all the technical details later. Right now, tell us everything that happened, from the time that you first got this stone to when you blacked out.”

  “You’re kidding. I already told Dad everything.”

  “And he’s out of it, so—”

  “Is he okay? Will he be…?” She clutched her nightgown in stiff fingers.

  “He’s resting,” Grayson said. “He’ll be fine. So tell us what happened.”

  She sighed. She gave them a brief rundown of what had happened since Brian gave her the stone. The globe didn’t do anything when she told them that Brooke demanded the stone from her, but Victor’s reaction was predictably Victor.

  “You should have told me, and your father.” Victor punctuated his statement with an accusing finger.

  “Yeah. Believe me, I know. But I promised Brian I wouldn’t say anything about the stone to anyone.”

  “And why did he make you promise that?”

  “I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me.”

  “What did he tell you about the stone?” Grayson asked.

  “Not much. Just that it was ancient. Powerful. And if it fell into the wrong hands, well, you know.”

  The globe hovered in front of her, its yellow stones glowing.

  “Why did Brian interrupt your play to hand the stone to you? Why not give it to one of us?” Victor pushed away from the wall and walked a few steps closer to Kate.

  “I don’t know. He…” She looked from Victor to Grayson. Brian could have been working for either one of them, but clearly he didn’t trust them. Could she? She glanced at the silver globe. If she didn’t answer, would they assume something made her not answer?

  “He never said.”

  Victor frowned. “Kate, you have to tell us everything you know. If Brian said something—”

  “Look, I don’t know anything else.” All she had left were her own suspicions about what Brian might have been doing with the stone, where he had gotten it, for whom he might have been working. But those were just guesses.

  Victor gave her a long look and frowned, as if he were weighing everything she’d said. Then he held out his hand. The swirls of golden energy around her dissipated, and the ball sped back to him. “It didn’t react to you. So you’re not possessed.” He handed the ball to Grayson.

  “So I’m the one who hurt Dad? Not the stone?”

  Her uncle’s eyes were sympathetic. “Yes.”

  She slumped to the floor. “How?”

  “I don’t know. But I know how to find out.” Grayson put the ball back in the cabinet and shut the door, locking it with a moment’s concentration. He walked to the edge of the circle stones. Reaching into his pocket, he took out a small silver box that fit in the palm of his hand. He opened it. Inside, nestled in a cocoon of white silk, sat the stone, black as bone burned down to coal in the heat of a holocaust.

  It whispered to Kate from the moment her uncle lifted the lid on the box.

  Touch me. Touch me. Touch me one more time. Just once, and then everything will be over.

  She tumbled into its vast ebony depths. Its quiet murmurs continued, and she sensed the e
normous power slumbering within. She felt pulled toward the awakening magic—magic that had its own, inhuman agenda.

  An agenda she wanted to fulfill. She leaned toward the stone—a little, an inch, before images of Brian’s frantic chanting, his panicked face, his voice screaming in agony, rushed into her mind. She jerked back. No.

  “What the hell are you doing with that in here?” Victor took a step toward Grayson.

  “I’ve got it under control. It’s safe enough.” Grayson shut its lid.

  Kate blinked. What the hell just happened?

  “Are you kidding?” Victor said. “That thing killed Brian. It messed with Kate’s mind and did God knows what to her. You think you can play with it?”

  “I’m not playing. And as to whether it killed Brian, that’s a matter of interpretation.”

  “Are you tweaked? What the hell is the matter with you?”

  “I know what I’m doing, young man. Better than you do. I need the stone here to diagnose what’s going on with Kate.”

  “I don’t like this.”

  “I’ll need your help. Monitor me while I do the spell. Make sure nothing…interferes,” Grayson said.

  “You mean like the ‘safe and under control’ stone?”

  “That or anything else.”

  “Fine.”

  Kate stared down at the ties of her nightgown. Anything to avoid focusing on the box in Grayson’s hand. “It’s not fine with me. I don’t want that thing doing anything else to me.”

  “It won’t. I’m only using it as a kind of reference. If I can see the traces of its influence in you while I do a diagnostic spell, then that will tell me what the stone did, and didn’t, do. Just sit back and relax.”

  She squirmed as Grayson reopened the silver box. Maybe a quick peek at the stone wouldn’t hurt. Its dark radiance drew her gaze as she looked up, but nothing murmured in her mind. Good. Maybe I just imagined it all.

  Grayson concentrated and murmured a spell, his fingers weaving curves and crosses too fast for Kate to follow. Victor’s eyes narrowed in concentration—monitoring Grayson, she assumed.

  She stared at the stone, waiting for it to do something, anything. It remained silent.

  After a minute or so her back got warm and tingly. The warmth changed to pinpricks of ice. Grayson’s spell worked its way into her body, molecule by molecule, taking her apart and looking at every particle of her until it understood her better than she knew herself.

  “Um…Grayson, this feels pretty weird.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s supposed to.” He glanced over at the stone.

  The cold receded as quickly as it had come, leaving her stomach churning.

  Victor stared at her. “No way. I don’t believe it.” He shot Grayson a glance. “Why didn’t I see that before?”

  “The stone’s residual energy blocked her aura. I cleared it out.” Grayson snapped the lid shut on the stone and put the box in his pocket.

  “Aura? I have an aura?” She looked down at herself. She couldn’t see anything different.

  “Your aura’s changed. It’s a rainbow hue like ours now, not a Null’s blue-green tint. We both see it,” Grayson said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you’re a not a Null anymore. You’re a—”

  “Maybe nothing. Wearing a wizard’s robe doesn’t make you a wizard.” Victor gave Grayson a long look. Then he addressed Kate. “After all, you were supposed to be big shakes before, when you were a kid, and that amounted to a big pile of nada—or so I’m told. Didn’t you fail your aptitude test, back when you were twelve?”

  She flushed. She could still remember every minute of the test. The flame glowing in her mother’s hand, her mother pleading with Kate to cast her own spell and duplicate the feat. She’d reached for the symbol in her mind, using the chant that had been drilled into her memory. Sweat had poured from her as she looked at Grayson, her eyes desperate. Her utter failure as the circle stones went out, one by one, beneath her feet.

  “Yeah. I’m not likely to forget. Why are you bringing that up? It’s not like it’s news.”

  Victor shrugged. “I can’t see that anything’s changed here. So your aura’s pretty. Big whoop. It’s not like you can control what you did upstairs.” He turned around and stalked back to his post by the wall, then stood and watched her. His eyes went blank for a minute, the way they did when he checked the security grid. The shimmering curtain around the circle stones flickered, then turned a lighter shade of amber.

  Asshole. She’d show him. Grayson said she wasn’t a Null anymore. Fine. She’d take Victor’s words and shove them down his oh-so-annoying throat.

  The symbol for fire sprang to her mind once more. Four points joined by a circle with a sharp twist at the end. The ancient words came back to her—the chant she’d memorized so long ago and so perfectly for the test to no avail. She hadn’t needed it a few hours ago, the power rising in her so hot and so urgent, but maybe she’d need it now.

  She focused on the symbol—tracing it out with angry, jerking movements against the cold floor of the Sanctum as she chanted the words she thought she’d never speak again. The words her mother had urged her to say so long ago, the words Grayson had drilled into her. The words he focused on so intently now, standing over the circle, his eyes locked on her.

  Power rushed from the center of her being, down her arm, and around her hand. It leaped into the air and burst into flame around her fingers, the tendrils a soft warmth that caressed her skin as they danced back and forth. She stared at her hand. Her flaming hand.

  “Huh,” Victor said to Grayson, a half-smile on his face. “I guess you were right.”

  She was a caster. Well, hot damn.

  Chapter Ten

  It wasn’t as if Kate hadn’t suspected she could do magic. Not after what she did to Dad and all that “floating in the bathroom” business. And the soft thrum of the Sanctum humming in her bones. Still… She let out a ragged breath. To say that this changed everything was an understatement.

  “I know this is a shock—” Grayson began.

  Victor broke in. “How the hell did it happen? It’s impossible.”

  “It’s never happened before. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible,” Grayson said.

  “Did the stone change me?” Kate asked. “When it killed Brian?”

  “Yes. My scan showed that the genetic combination for magic has been altered inside your DNA. When you were tested for magical aptitude, your Null gene was dominant, your caster gene recessive. That’s not supposed to change. But it has. Now your caster gene is expressing.”

  It sounded like Grayson was about to say something else, but he stayed silent.

  “How could an artifact change me into a caster? I thought they held a few more spells than a talisman, more powerful spells.”

  “The stone is different, Kate. Its creator layered spells into it, spells connected to each other. When the right conditions come up, those spells are triggered, almost like a program executing on a computer.”

  “Is it…finished?” It didn’t feel finished.

  “I’m sure there’s nothing else to worry about. But if anything else bothers you, come to me. Let me know what’s happening. We’ll figure it out together.”

  Kate drew her knees up to her chin and glanced sideways at her uncle. “Seems like you’ve figured out quite a bit already. You said that forensic reconstruction spell you cast showed what happened. So you know how Brian died.”

  “All the spell lets me do is put together a theory.”

  “And?”

  He sighed. “Brian tried to interfere with the stone when it was making you a caster. He tried a simple counterspell. It interrupted the stone’s process, and the stone’s energy surged into him.”

  Grayson’s explanation made some sense. Brian had tried a spell, she remembered that. And the backlash… Well, she’d never forget the feel of the power that had arced into Brian. But something about Grayson’s explan
ation—something she couldn’t pin down—bothered her.

  “Did the energy backlash kill him?” Kate said.

  “Yes, I’m sorry.” Grayson closed his eyes. The lines on his face looked deeper even in the dim light of the Sanctum. “It overwhelmed his protective spell. The stone’s energy proved too powerful once it activated.”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Victor said.

  “Victor…”

  “Stop dancing around the truth. If she’s a caster, she should know what this thing is. After all, it created her.”

  Grayson sighed. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, then gave Kate a long look.

  “Kate, the stone… It’s a work of primal magic.”

  “You’re kidding.” Her hands twisted the hem of her nightgown in a little knot. The ancient casters had used primal magic to power their spells—magic in its raw form. Modern casters had lost the ability to use primal magic unless they used the rare artifacts the ancients had left behind. Brian had said the stone was old but…damn. What the hell did it mean that primal magic had made her a caster?

  Grayson continued, “I don’t know what Brian was doing with the stone, or if he knew it was a primal magic artifact.”

  “Oh, he knew,” Victor said. “Brian was way too sharp to be carrying around a primal magic artifact and not know it.”

  “Believe what you want. I know—I knew Brian. He would never have delved into primal magic, not without… He just wouldn’t.” Grayson slumped over in his chair, holding his head in his hands.

  “Do you know where he got the stone?” Kate asked.

  “It doesn’t matter now,” Grayson said.

  “Like hell it does,” Victor said. “Whoever was chasing him will still be after it.”

  Grayson took his pillbox from his pocket and swallowed a dose of medication. “Brian’s dead. Let any secrets he had die with him. If you want to blame someone for what he did, blame me. Obviously I did something wrong when I trained him.” He tucked his pillbox away again. “He should have come to me, told me about it. But he didn’t. I’m going to be living with this for the rest of my life.”