Blood And Stone: A Novel in The Atalante Chronicles

by Nicholas W King

  “When the Red King’s done with you,” she hissed as she rose to her feet, “I’m going to savor every last drop of your blood.”

  She kicked my cane away into the darkness. Grabbing me by my good arm, she dragged me into the warehouse to bear witness to my failure.

  Chapter 23

  I didn’t see much of anything but the ceiling at first. My sense of smell was undiminished, though. The aroma of thick candle wax filled the air. There was a pungent undercurrent beneath the wax smell. I recognized the scents as some roots I knew would be useful in ritual magic. No, I’m not going to mention their names.

  When Magdelena was satisfied that she had dragged me far enough, she propped me up against the barrier I’d summoned the day before. The ragged pillars I’d seen that day still sat in the center of the room. They formed a pentacle inside of a freshly drawn chalk circle. Within the circle were smaller circles and other geometric designs filled with archaic script. The focusing language was unknown to me. The entire ritual set up was not dissimilar to the containment and banishment design I’d used a few nights before. I could see smoke rising from five bowls, one on each pillar. The pungent odor was coming from those.

  In the exact center of the ritual circle knelt James. He’d been stripped bare. Heavy black manacles were wrapped around his wrists and ankles. The manacles were attached to a length of chain bolted to the stone floor. His face, arms, back, and legs were covered in bruises and cuts.

  The kid had fought back. Hard. And he’d paid for it.

  Although I couldn’t move most of my body, I could still move my eyes. I tried clearing my throat, which felt like I had swallowed crushed glass. Standing in his rich crimson cloak and metal skull mask was Terry Masters. He stood with the confidence of a man who owned the world and wasn’t afraid to show it. All I could see through his mask were his eyes.

  They danced with madness.

  “You’ve caused my love to hurt,” said Terry, his voice muffled in the mast. He lorded over his nephew from outside the ritual space. With his index finger, he beckoned Magdelena to him. I could see blood had dried on his knuckles.

  Magdelena did as requested, slinking over to Terry with serpentine grace. The effect of her movement, coupled with the lack of clothing, wasn’t lost on me. It wasn’t lost on Terry, either. He was transfixed, as if she were the snake charmer rather than the snake. Personally, when I fantasize about women, I prefer them to not have skin like luggage. Her hips did have a mesmerizing quality, if you forgot they were attached to a bloodsucking bitch who didn’t have the decency to die.

  I get bitter sometimes.

  Magdelena planted a long, slow kiss on the face of Terry’s mask. When she pulled away, she licked the blood off her lips where the metal had cut them. “I bit him,” she said. “He can’t resist anything. Can I drain him?”

  “No,” said Terry, his voice firm. “Not yet. Wizard, do you know why I haven’t killed you?”

  I tried to speak, but my tongue felt like a barbell in my mouth.

  “He can’t speak, my dear,” said Magdelena. She was outside Terry’s field of vision. If he could see her, he would have seen the disdain on her face as she said those last two words.

  “But he can watch,” said Terry. If he had started cackling madly like a B-grade Bond villain, it wouldn’t have surprised me. “I will have my nephew’s power, Wizard. And then I’ll let her kill you.”

  My mouth struggled to form basic words. I tried to move, but it felt like my body was sewn into the barrier behind me. Finally, I managed to growl, “Coooo...ppp...sss...”

  The Red King cackled. Magdelena stirred, concern growing in her features.

  “It won’t take long,” said Terry. I’m sure that he was smiling behind his mask.

  Magdelena’s venom was losing its grip, slowly but surely. All I had to do was stall for time and let Terry grandstand a bit more. He’d never read the Evil Overlord list on the internet; that much was clear. You never told your hated enemy all about your evil plans. You shot him dead first and then told the corpse.

  “Wh...Wh...Wh...yah?” I managed to spit out.

  That simple question stopped Terry’s gloating dead. With slow, practiced ease, he removed the mask. Terry’s face was gaunt. It looked like he had lost 20 pounds in two days. His eyes had sunken into their sockets. He had a day’s worth of stubble growth and looked like he hadn’t slept since the last time I saw him. He stalked over to me, each step landing like a gunshot on the stone floor.

  “Because,” he shouted, spit frothing at the corners of his mouth, “it’s mine.” He balled up his fist and clocked me across the jaw. My head bounced off the floor as I fell over. Terry yanked me upright by my hair. “The power should have been mine.” He hit me again, this time with his mask. I tumbled in the other direction and landed on my broken arm. The vampire venom did nothing to dull the pain.

  “Prop him back up and let’s get this over with,” Terry told Magdelena.

  The vampiress did as she was told. Her back was to the Red King, so he didn’t see the disgust on her face. She pulled me up by my good arm. With one talon, she scooped up some of the blood rolling down my face from the wound Terry’s mask had caused. She slid the long nail over her tongue and hissed in satisfaction. “My brother was right about one thing,” she whispered. “You taste divine.”

  Her statement jogged something in my addled brain. Terry resumed his place at the head of the pentacle, facing both his nephew and me. James wasn’t crying or pleading. He was staring at his uncle. I imagine the teenager was doing his best to muster a defiant stare.

  Trying to stall the ritual for a bit longer and hoping Angela would show up any second with reinforcements, I asked in a croaking voice, “You...You’re...brother?”

  The sorcerer’s face turned as crimson as his cloak. He raised his hand with an open palm toward me, as if my question had been all the reason he needed to forego keeping me alive to witness his triumph. Before he could utter a syllable to cast the spell, I finished the question.

  “Wizard?”

  He stopped his casting. If he could have burned me to death with his stare, he would have done just that.

  “He’s trying to stall. He’s hoping his cop friends will arrive,” said Magdelena, her words pure venom. “Perform the ritual!”

  Terry looked from me to Magdelena. He smiled, but it never reached his eyes. “Secure him, then,” he said. “And we’ll begin. The ritual takes several minutes.” His voice hadn’t quite returned to a normal calm, but it was likely as close as he could manage.

  Magdelena turned away from the sorcerer and started walking to me. She hadn’t taken three steps before I heard Terry utter that strange language again. Three flaming shells of napalm left his hand, but his aim wasn’t true for all of them. Two slammed into the wall behind me, splashing liquid fire along the walls. The last one hit the vampire full in the back.

  The congealing napalm slid down her back, igniting every inch of scaly skin. Even the tattered, soaked dress went up in flames. Magdelena shrieked, falling to her knees no more than three feet from me. Within a second or two, the flames had reached her head, burning away flesh and hair into oily residue. I thought about closing my eyes, but I didn’t. I watched as her skin blistered, then sloughed off like dripping candle wax. I watched her bones blacken. She raised an arm to reach out for me, hoping to take me with her in her last moments. I moved my leg out of reach and watched her die. I looked into her eyes until they melted into her skull.

  And I smiled.

  “I am not your pawn,” said Terry, his voice thundering in the nearly empty warehouse. His eyes were wild and he had a gleeful smile on his lips. “Your master will not be my master. My power serves me and me alone!”

  The vampire released a final, howling screech before into a ball and going still. The flames died out moments later. My eyes went from the smoking husk of Magdelena to her killer. Terry’s smile was nothing short of maniacal.

  Turning back
to his bound nephew, Terry began to chant in the same language he’d been using to cast his spells. It began as a low murmur, a trail of connecting lyrics to the ritual circle laid before him. My eyes traced the design surrounding James, trying to find a weakness or flaw in it. The floor beneath him held carved rivulets leading away from a slightly raised platform. The blood from his various cuts flowed down and out along those grooves to the five pillars. Terry had chosen living blood as his power source, rather than harvesting the teen’s organs.

  Without pausing to consider the downside of my next idea, I bit my lower lip hard enough to draw blood. I let it pool in my mouth as I gauged the distance between me and the ritual space. It was about 10 feet away. Projectile spitting was never my strongest skill. It was a ridiculous plan, but I was willing to try it.

  Using what little strength I had left, I pushed off the column and spit in the direction of the closest pillar.

  If Terry saw my action, he didn’t acknowledge think it a threat. My bloody spittle landed just inside one of the grooves, mixing with James’ blood.

  As the ritual chanting grew louder, I felt the pull of the connection my blood had created. A web of incandescent red mist rose from the floor. It hung like a gossamer curtain around James. He was becoming jittery, struggling against the chains – and against the growing sensation he must be feeling from Terry.

  My leg started twitching. I could feel warmth returning to my limbs. As quickly as it began, it was over. Everything began to grow heavy. It felt just like the moment after Magdelena had bitten me.

  Terry’s chanting grew in pitch and intensity. His voice had taken on a vibrating tone as the magic of the ritual gained power. James was no longer pulling at his bindings. He slumped closer to the floor, his face almost resting against the stone. The mist had solidified into multiple ribbons of swirling crimson as James’ connection to the magic coalesced. My arms slumped to my side and my eyelids drooped.

  It seemed like a good idea just to go to sleep. Then I felt the power developing from the ritual. My blood had made me part of it. If I didn’t do something, Terry would steal the power of two wizards. The connection to magic is a spiritual muscle. The more a wizard uses it over time, the stronger the connection becomes. There are older wizards I know who could level a building with a single spell that would cause an overload for any younger wizard, even me. In that moment, I could feel the potential James possessed. He was like a small brushfire now... but he wouldn’t stay that way. I pictured him growing in power with the passage of years, a capable wizard who would rework reality with the snap of his fingers.

  And all of that potential was there for the taking.

  If Terry finished the ritual, he could ascend to the level of power he craved. But if I took it, I knew what I could do with it. I would have enough power to shake off the Rite of Charon or even undo the ritual through brute force. And if any Sentinel came after me to personally handle my execution, I could smash them like insects. With James’ power, I’d even be able to regain my inheritance, force the Assembly to give me back what they had taken.

  The image of Patricia on her porch, fresh tears streaming from her eyes, smashed my brief greed like a sledgehammer. She had nearly wept when I told her what would happen if the Assembly took her son. The thought of using her son for my ends dried up under the memory of Patricia’s tears.

  My blood connected me to Terry. I could feel his avarice. If I ever got cancer, I’m sure it would feel like that. He wanted this, more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life. For him, magic was the end, the ability to manipulate the world to suit his whims. He thought the power to reshape the world would fill whatever void he had in his soul.

  Magic could be so much more than that. But he wouldn’t understand that.

  I siphoned off a bit of the power in the ritual. The infusion of raw power breathed life into my limbs, washing away the lingering effects of Magdelena’s venom. My eyes opened and I focused on the chains attached to James. It took only a simple channeling of power. I muttered, ”Affligo.”

  The metal clasps withered and broke away from James’ wrists and ankles.

  “James!” I shouted, almost drowned out by Terry’s rising chants. “Stay down.”

  The swirling crimson rings around James weaved and spun with greater ferocity. Using my connection, I reached out with my magical senses and found some of the blood that had been used in the ritual. Transmuting the blood into a base element was simple magic.

  “Aspargo,” I said, pushing a bit of the ritual’s power through me. A small portion of the blood pulled away from the swirling vortex and transformed into a bubble of clear water. The bubble hovered over the chalk lines of one piece of the ritual circle. There was a splash after the bubble burst. The chalk was broken by the water, just as Terry’s chanting reached a crescendo.

  Ritual designs hold magic in place until released at the end of the spell. Without the lattice network keeping the power in check, the ritual became a swirling mass of wild magic. The pillars broke apart like they were made of glass.

  Terry howled and turned his attention to me. He raised his palm to unleash his favorite spell. I latched on to a small portion of the wild magic and channeled it, saying the word, ”Cordis.”

  I was standing in a black space, a web of interconnected synapses before me. I could feel Terry trying to push me out of his mind, but he was unfocused, his rage keeping him from putting together a firm defense. He tried erecting the mental equivalent of walls but I pushed through them like they were papier mache. I dove into the web of Terry’s memories.

  There were two boys, young and smiling. One could make fire dance in the sky around them like fireflies. The other looked on with awe and a little resentment. I saw an old woman, wrinkled like a raisin with unforgiving crystal-blue eyes. She was screaming and hitting the boys with a belt.

  A teenaged Terry was telling his older brother something. Terry watched his older brother walking away.

  I snatched at the memories, pulling them from the web and watching them disappear like smoke in a breeze. I saw Terry standing over a grave. No tears came to him. Terry was an older man now, but his eyes were cold and distant.

  I watched him walk up to his brother and put a bullet in the back of his brother’s head. I watched Terry take a knife to his wife’s chest, digging his hands in and removing her vital organs while she lay screaming on a table.

  I heard a voice behind me say, “Terry.” I turned around and saw, through Terry’s eyes, as James stood in the center of the ritual space.

  I watched from Terry’s perspective as James drew in his power from the storm of wild magic around him. The energy entered through the cuts on his body, closing them, leaving his skin unmarked. The cloud of magical power disappeared into the boy’s body. A nimbus of crimson surrounded him, radiating off his frame like heat waves on asphalt.

  I disconnected from Terry’s mind as I heard James say, “Firaga.”

  Gouts of flame burst from James’ hand, engulfing his uncle before the sorcerer could recover from my mental invasion. Terry’s rich crimson robes burst alight like paper. He fell to the floor, writhing and screaming in an agony I don’t want to imagine.

  James walked around the broken pillars and continued pouring flame on this uncle. The boy’s face terrified me. He was gleeful, reveling in his moment of revenge. When he was satisfied that he had barbequed his uncle sufficiently, James turned his flames on the building, setting fire to everything that would burn.

  “James,” I said. He couldn’t hear me. “James! JAMES!”

  My scream brought him out of his reverie. Smoke filled the warehouse. Even seated on the floor as I was, it was getting uncomfortably hot.

  “Help me get out of here,” I said, using the barrier to try to stand, “before you roast us alive.”

  The flames roared around us as James lifted me up and put my good arm over his shoulder. We made it through the hole in the back wall as the inferno grew in its wild rage.
We stopped long enough to grab my cane. Finally outside, we laid down on the wet grass.

  In the distance, sirens approached.

  Chapter 24

  My eyes opened to egg-shell white ceiling and sunlight. I looked around to see I was in a hospital bed. My left arm was in a cast. Someone had taken it upon themselves to write “Badass” in black permanent marker on the cast. The sharp pains in my chest told me moving would be ill-advised.

  “Finally,” a sharp but sweet female voice said. I looked to my left and, as my vision cleared more, I could see Angela seated there. Marks was sitting next to her, a pair of crutches leaning against the wall. “You sleep like the dead.”

  “I look good for a corpse.,” I said. I gave Angela a once-over. She wore comfortable jeans and a plain blue t-shirt. The only evidence she’d recently been in a life-or-death struggle were some bruises and a few scrapes on her face. Lester was also dressed comfortably in sweat pants and a loose sweater, both dark gray. “You okay?” I asked him.

  “Nothing serious,” he said, smiling. “Won’t be running any time soon.”

  “How long?” I asked, searching the room for a clock. The one on the wall showed just past noon.

  “Two days,” replied Angela. “Patricia made a full statement concerning James’ abduction. Between that and Zeke’s statement, we got a search warrant for Terry’s property. He, uh... he kept pieces of their hearts in jars in his fridge.”

  “Creepy,” said Lester.

  “The whole place was creepy,” she said. “He had these markings carved into the walls all over his house. And all kinds of what profilers called trophies. Little mementos of his kills.”

  “The marks were for warding,” I said. “Same as at my place, probably. Anything happen when you broke in the door?”

  “First cop had a riot shield,” answered Lester. “It saved his life. There was a small explosion, some kind of incendiary device, the bomb squad figures. Never found a piece of it, though. He’s okay.”