As if knowing we were talking about him, Dylan growled and rammed into the glass again. He was simply unrecognizable, and it tore Tatyana apart.
“How do we fix him?” she asked.
“There’s a cure,” Alton replied. “This is rare and ancient magic. I actually know the curse; it’s written in one of the Grimoires in our coven. I’ll need to check the Grimoires in the Forbidden Section for the cure. But I know it’ll need to be administered orally. One of us needs to go in there and do it.”
Tobe nodded. “I’ve had my share of monster wrestling. I can take him.”
Looking at Dylan, I couldn’t help but wonder what had driven a kid like Kenneth to go dark-side like that, and how the Ryder twins had gotten their hands on such powerful spell work. This was ancient, heavy-duty, evil stuff, and most, if not all of it, was kept under magical lock and key in the covens. How easy would it be for someone to just walk into one of the Forbidden Sections and snatch such hexes?
They must’ve had inside help.
Eleven
Tatyana
Ever since Dylan came to the San Diego Coven, I’d had a bit of a soft spot for him. He was so… different from the others. He didn’t look like he belonged here, with his short brown hair, cleft chin, and varsity jacket. He was the typical jock, lover of sports and weekends at the beach. His warm brown eyes spoke of summer barbecues and athletic scholarships at some Ivy League school, not of Chaos and magic and covens.
He always seemed out of his element, too. He didn’t socialize much, and he was the first to rush out at the end of the week to see his mom and hang out with his college buddies. The coven, to him, was more like a job. He spent most of the afternoons and nights here, with magical training and whatever missions he was assigned to. The mornings were always for college. He valued his academic education, that much was obvious, and was still regretting his decision to stay here, instead of going to Yale. He’d had a full ride for that, but the local coven was still catching some serious heat for bad magical behavior, and Dylan had yet to fully control his abilities.
Most of his Chaos energy worked to amplify his physical strength and speed, which was why he was so good at sports. His Water and Telekinesis abilities came second and third, and he was still learning to develop and master them.
I liked him as a person because I knew that, deep down, despite the frat boy allure, Dylan was sweet, caring, and sensitive. Our little Rag Team was growing on him, and he’d started spending more time with us, dedicating some of his weekends to additional coven work, just so we’d all be together. He was loyal and noble by nature. His adoptive parents had raised him to be a fine young man.
But none of that mattered at this point. The Dylan I knew was gone, and we needed to get him back. Most importantly, I felt guilty. This had happened under my watch. I should’ve known that Kenneth was trouble. I should’ve followed my gut and neutralized the kid before he even came into the kitchen, protocols be damned.
I didn’t, though. I thought I could handle it. I didn’t think there was all that darkness and toxic rot beneath the preppy boy façade that Kenneth had been wearing. My mistake. And Dylan was paying the price. I had to fix this.
When Alton came back with the cure from one of the Grimoires, Tobe and Wade immediately sprang into action and helped him gather all the ingredients in a copper bowl with ancient Chinese markings etched into the lip.
“Xiao Fei, former director of the Beijing Coven, came up with a cure back in the nineteenth century,” Alton explained as he laid out all the ingredients on a piece of cloth on the floor, kneeling before them and the bowl. “Before that, people afflicted by this particular hex were locked up for life. In some cases, they had to be killed. You see, the hex doesn’t stop at what you see now.”
Dylan had tremendous amounts of energy left in him, and he continued to wrestle against his restraints and roar furiously with each failure to free himself.
“Are you telling me it’ll get worse?” I asked, and couldn’t stop myself from giving Wade, Santana, Harley, Raffe, and Astrid a concerned frown. Part of me was trying to reach out to them for emotional support. I was genuinely overwhelmed, though it wasn’t in my nature to ask for help.
Out of them all, Harley was the first to give me a warm smile. She could feel me. She knew exactly what I was going through, and, at that moment, I couldn’t describe how nice it was to know that she was around.
“Much worse, I’m afraid,” Alton replied. He then proceeded to measure and add the spell ingredients into the copper bowl, one by one. Fig leaves, twigs of Oliver Plum’s Yew, angelica blossoms and cinnamon sticks, powdered green jade and salt from the Dead Sea, one ounce of Paris Green elixir—not the insecticide, but a magical substance made from extremely rare crystals—and a gallon of sweet water from TuoTuo, Yangtze’s headstream. Sloane Bellmore and Marianne Gracelyn had an impressive reserve of spell ingredients in their repositories. “His body will become insufficient for his rage. Unless he is permanently tied down, he’ll start hurting himself. All he knows now is to kill everything that moves. To wreck. To destroy.”
Tobe stood by Dylan’s box, with his feathered arms crossed, watching as he kept banging his shoulders into the glass. “Yes. I can see that.”
Something snapped. Dylan’s arms came out, finally free of their restraints. I held my breath, realizing he’d just managed to break through cable ties, industrial tape, and ropes. He punched and clawed at the box, until his legs were loose, too. His strength had finally overcome his physical limitations.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, making myself available to the spirit world. As a Kolduny, I could turn my spiritual ability on and off—otherwise I would’ve spent my entire life in extremely crowded places, even when I should’ve been alone. The coven was filled with ghosts, so there were plenty of people for me to talk to.
The darkness before me was gradually replaced by movement, wisps of bluish light, moving around us. All of them were spirits, lonely wanderers who couldn’t let go after they’d died in the coven. Sometimes, when I didn’t want anyone else to know and hear what I was doing, I reached out to the spirits without using my body. My mind just opened up and they picked up on my brainwaves. They could read my thoughts, if I let them.
It took just a few seconds out there, in the real world, but in the veil, where I’d just entered, time flowed differently.
“I need help!” I called out to the spirits walking around me. “I need your strength!”
Of all the wisps that seemed to be ignoring me, one stopped. I’d gotten its attention. That was usually the first step, asking for help and getting one of the dead to answer. The spirit moved toward me and gradually regained its humanoid shape.
It was a man in his late twenties, with rich, curly black hair and wild green eyes. He’d broken a few hearts in his day, for sure. He wore jeans and a hockey jersey, stained with blood—most likely his. He’d died a violent death, yet his expression was one of curiosity, even slight amusement, as he stopped a couple of feet away from me. He was translucent, just like Will, the boy ghost I’d met back at the Travis house, but he seemed slightly more consistent. As if his spirit was more… condensed.
“I’m a Kolduny,” I said to him.
“I know you, Tatyana,” he replied with a smirk.
That made me shiver, but, then again, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. I’d been here for a few months now, and I’d called out to the spirits before.
“You do, huh?” I murmured.
“You’re the only spirit-talker in this place. Among the living, anyway,” the ghost said. “You’re quite a celebrity around here.”
“And who are you?” I asked.
He raised his chin with great pride. “I’m Oberon Marx,” he declared. “Star athlete of the San Diego Coven!”
I was tempted to roll my eyes at him, but, instead, I gave him a polite smile. “I’ve heard about you,” I replied. “You were a promising sportsman, right?”
&nbs
p; He nodded enthusiastically. “Football, hockey, baseball, wrestling, swimming, mixed martial arts, and fencing. There wasn’t anything I didn’t excel at. Glad to hear I’ve left a legacy.”
“You most certainly have,” I said, remembering an article I’d read about him in one of the coven’s updated history books.
“You called for help. I’m here. What do you need?” he asked.
Even through the darkness, we could both see the silhouettes of the material world around us. I pointed at Dylan’s glass box. “He’s been hexed,” I said. “I need your strength to make him swallow the cure before he dies.”
Oberon grinned, enthusiasm glimmering in his eyes. “Well, I made the right call to stop then, didn’t I? That guy’s a Herculean, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Yes, he is,” I replied.
“Herculean” was the title given to magicals with enhanced strength and speed, the “athletes” of Chaos, whose magical energy fueled their physical features. They were infinitely stronger, faster, more flexible, and more resilient than most humans. In many cases, they could really stand out if they wanted to. They were, essentially, superhumans. They weren’t exactly rare, but their numbers weren’t high, either. On average, there were between fifty and seventy per coven, with varying degrees of athletic prowess.
According to the lore, Hercules himself had been real, a hero of ancient Greece and a magical who… stood out, as well. They’d made up legends about him, so the title sort of stuck.
“You’re in luck, Tatyana,” Oberon said. “I’m a Herculean, too. One of the best in my generation, in fact!”
That made all the sense in the world, given his athletic career and fame among the magicals. He’d died sometime about twenty years ago, but the circumstances of his death were unknown to me. I couldn’t remember much, but I could always look up articles about him in the archives. Either way, the day he passed away was a sad day for all the covens. That much I remembered.
“Tobe wants to go in there and give him the antidote, but it’s my fault Dylan is in this state to begin with. I need to fix this,” I murmured.
“Don’t be like that. You didn’t hex him.” Oberon chuckled, then stilled and turned serious all of a sudden. “Or did you?”
“No, it was someone else. But I wasn’t fast enough. I should’ve done more to stop it.”
“Okay, if we’re gonna do this, I need you to let go of that guilt. It ruins my vibe,” Oberon groaned, rolling his eyes. “I’ll help you. Tobe may be strong and whatnot, but he’s underestimating us Herculeans. I dropped him on his ass more than once during my living days. I had a three-month training season in New York, at one point. He was one of my favorite sparring partners.”
Back then, the Bestiary had been the New York Coven’s responsibility. The timeline matched.
“You know how a Kolduny functions, right?” I asked, mentally preparing myself for the next step. He nodded. “I will let you in, and I’ll lend you my body, but my mind is mine. You do as I say, okay?”
“Relax, Tatyana. You’re not the first Kolduny I’ve ridden,” Oberon said, grinning. That made me wonder who else he’d possessed among my kind, but there was no time for background checks. I had to help Dylan, and, as per Oberon’s statement, Tobe wasn’t enough to subdue him. “Open wide…”
That had come out wrong, and he knew it. “Ugh. Dude.”
“Sorry. You know what I mean,” Oberon replied, stifling a laugh.
I breathed deeply and opened my very being for occupation. Oberon stepped forward and into me, temporarily fusing with my flesh and bones. I felt cold, thousands of tiny electrical currents zapping through me at lightspeed. Oberon had taken over my body, but I’d retained my consciousness. It was rare for a Kolduny of my caliber to be overrun by a ghost. When it did happen, however, Santana and Dylan were always there to pull me back, so I could eject the wily spirit.
I opened my eyes, returning to reality, to the natural flow of time, just as Alton finished preparing the hex cure. It had turned into a thick, dark green liquid, which he poured into a glass bottle. Tobe reached out to get it, but I stepped in and snatched it from Alton’s hand.
That took him by surprise. “Tatyana, what are you doing?”
“I’ve got this,” I said, energized as though I’d just swallowed the sun.
It didn’t take long for him and Tobe to figure it out. “You let a spirit in,” Alton replied.
I nodded. “Dylan is a Herculean, and, no offense, Tobe, but you don’t have the chops for him no matter how many monsters you’ve tackled before.”
“Now, that’s not exactly—” Tobe tried to object, but I cut him off.
“Oberon Marx,” I said.
That was enough to make him back down. “You have Oberon Marx in there?”
“Who’s that?” Harley asked.
“Oh. Big-time Herculean, star athlete of SDC about twenty years ago. Died a gruesome death in the late nineties, though the circumstances were unclear, from what I remember,” Alton briefly explained. Judging by the look on his face, he was quite impressed.
“You’re a fan of his?” I chuckled. I’d felt Oberon wanting to ask that question, and I could feel the pride swelling in my chest. The guy had lived to be adored.
“Most valuable player of the twentieth century, basically,” Alton replied. “Well, he could’ve been. His untimely departure deprived us of a legend, but… I’m glad to see he’s helping you.”
I gave him a weak smile and looked at Tobe. “Don’t get me wrong, I have all the faith in you, Tobe, but I feel responsible, and I can do this,” I said.
Tobe nodded and got ready to open Dylan’s box. Dylan had gone quiet, eyeing me like a very hungry wolf. “You have to move fast, Tatyana. And don’t let him bite you,” Tobe instructed. “The hex is transferable.”
“Now he tells me,” I grumbled, holding the bottle tight in one hand as I stepped in front of the box. “I’m ready. Let me in.”
“Be careful, Taty!” Santana called behind me.
I knew they were all worried, but this was part of the gig. Chaos and magic were never rainbows and sprinkles. There was darkness and pain, danger and poison. Sure, there was wonder and healing, the accomplishment of extraordinary feats and a fusion with nature otherwise impossible to achieve. But most of the time, there were risks of all kinds to be factored into the life of a magical.
This was one of them.
Tobe opened the box, and I slipped inside at lightning speed. He locked me in there as Dylan stepped back. He was momentarily confused.
“Dylan, I know you’re in there,” I whispered.
He lunged at me, snarling like a vicious animal. I let Oberon take over my limbs. We tackled Dylan. He pushed me against one of the glass walls, but my legs jerked upward and I kneed him in the gut. He groaned from the pain but didn’t let that stop him.
Oberon was phenomenally strong. I’d carried a tied-up Dylan into the coven mostly due to adrenaline, but this… this was something else entirely. I felt as though I were made of rock and steel. He punched me several times, but I hit back with my left fist, while my right hand was busy protecting the bottle holding the cure.
“Dylan, listen to me!” I panted. “I know you’re in there! I need you to focus! I need you to stop this and drink the cure!”
He didn’t seem to care. He was too busy trying to take a bite out of me. Oberon’s reflexes were mine now, though, so Dylan didn’t get that chance. I kicked him, then hurled him over my shoulder. He hit his head against the glass, temporarily dazed.
I popped the cap off the bottle and gripped Dylan by the throat.
“You’re the only one I’ve ever felt a connection to, Dylan!” I said, my voice uneven and my eyes stinging from the tears threatening to come out. “Never mind that we’re all worried about you. I’m the one in here, now, asking you… Dylan, please! Help me out here!”
I tightened my grip on his throat, enough to constrict his windpipe. He was struggling to breathe.
“I know you’re different from other magicals,” I added. “I know you can beat this. Let me cure this hex you’re under, because this isn’t you, Dylan. I want my Dylan back! We all do!”
He stilled all of a sudden, breathing heavily, his hands still clutching my forearm in an attempt to push me back. I couldn’t help but thank the stars for Oberon in that moment.
He blinked. I’d managed to strike a chord in there, beneath the madness. For one moment, despite the yellow eyes, I felt as though I was looking at the real Dylan. My Dylan. I raised the cure bottle for him to see it.
“This will make you feel better,” I breathed. “Let me make you feel better.”
He didn’t say anything, but he exhaled sharply. His muscles were twitching angrily. Every fiber in his body was probably telling him to attack, but he held back. This was my chance. I put the bottle’s lip against his. He slowly opened his mouth, and I tilted the bottle but didn’t ease my grip on him. I couldn’t risk it.
He drank it all and snarled at me again.
Then, he froze, staring at me with wide eyes. The yellow faded, and the warm caramel-brown I’d grown to be so fond of came back in gentle ripples. The red veins withdrew.
“Dylan?” I croaked.
He blinked again, then dropped to his knees and retched all over my shoes. My stomach churned, mostly at the sight of what was pouring out of Dylan—it was a thick, black substance, riddled with tiny worms, and certainly not the liquid cure I’d just given him.
Tobe opened the box again and helped me out, while Wade and Raffe carried Dylan. He’d passed out, but he looked a lot better than the savage fiend I’d struggled with earlier.
“It’s done,” Alton said. “Good job, Tatyana.”
I gave him a faint nod, then let out a long sigh.
“Thanks, Oberon,” I whispered.
“You’re welcome, darling,” he replied, his voice echoing in my head.
“Time to let go,” I reminded him.
Harley Merlin 2: Harley Merlin and the Mystery Twins Page 11