He checked his wristwatch. “Playtime’s over. Time for your lesson.”
He slammed a fist into my face and the world went dark.
I came to, groggy and blurry-eyed, with a groan.
“Hey boss, this clown’s awake.”
Hands hauled me onto my knees. My body felt like chewing gum after the fact. Every wound throbbed, and my head pounded in rhythm. Tyler held me down, with my revolver pressed against my temple.
The rain had died. The city was quiet, broken only by the rumble of distant thunder. Everyone from the rave—everyone in the city with an ounce of Stig in their veins—stood on the lido deck. They surrounded the pool on the ground floor and crowded the balcony level above it. Hundreds of blank-faced, motionless addicts.
Madelyn’s zombie was with them on the opposite side of the pool. The Stig must have reclaimed control. Her soul floated above her body, unseen by everyone else. Her wide eyes pleaded with me for help, but she couldn’t move or speak.
Jocelyn was bound to Jesse’s totem by her wrists. Her good eye was focused on Eddie, who rested on a thin mattress at Jesse’s feet, swaddled with blankets. Despite everything happening around him, he looked to be asleep. At least, I hoped he was.
Jesse stood before his collection of bottled souls, which glowed in the dim light. The bastard looked none the worse for wear from our fight. A horde of drugged-out cultists chanted and drummed around him. The number of worshipers had tripled since I’d last seen them. The old hag, Bettany, stood nearby with her basket of flowers and Stig. Her face was a bloody ruin, and her left arm a crippled twig, but she was on her feet.
“Back with us?” Jesse laughed. “I’ll give you this much, Fossor. You’re a tough man to keep down. Maybe Sammy was right, we should have offered you a place with us. It wouldn’t have changed the outcome, but it would have saved me a headache.”
“Fuck you,” I groaned.
He smiled and slugged me. It almost put me under again, but he followed it with a slap to the face. “Focus, Alex! Eyes front! I don’t want you to miss this.”
“You gonna play god by killing all these people?”
“This ain’t about godhood, Alex. I told you that.”
“So what is it, then? Mass murder the only way you get hard?”
He grabbed me by my hair. “It’s about freedom. Freedom from the Society. From the Edicts. Freedom from all the people who want to shit on our lives!”
He dragged me towards the altar and threw me in front of Jocelyn. “Why not tell him, sis? Tell him about the life I had to live. The life you provided for me.”
Jocelyn gave Jesse a pained look, her eyes welling with tears.
“No? Let me, then.” Jesse put his arm around Jocelyn and gave her a rough shake. “After mom died, and dad fucked off, it was just us twins, yeah? Two Versed without a home. Then the Society finds us. Ol’ Walter Breckenridge, ain’t he a fine Yank? Tells us about the Society, said ol’ Joce here had ‘so much potential’. You could see how he wanted her. Was grooming her. But Joce was so into that, wasn’t she? Nothin’ ever opened your legs like a rich prat with a fat purse. Oh, the Society would be a sweet life for you, wouldn’t it? But me? I was the problem.”
“You and me, we ain’t people, Alex. We’re the skeletons in their closet. We’re fucking plague rats. I didn’t get a mentor. I got told off for being what I was. I got ignored. I got blamed. And a man can only take being called rotten so long before he starts being rotten, doesn’t he? You know a bit about that, don’t you, Alex?”
He dug into his deep pockets and pulled out Jocelyn’s teleportation bracelet. “See this? It’s my shackle. When Walter decided I was breaking the Edicts, Joce begged him not to execute me. He needed her, so he buried me. Fourteen years, I lived with this fucking thing on my wrist. In a prison behind a bookshelf. I’m told you got a taste of it. The soul-sucking power in that room? That was how they kept me. Fourteen years! Think about what it’s like to be trapped in your own goddamn mind, by your own blood, while she fucks the bastard that built your cage!”
I tried to meet Jocelyn’s gaze, but she looked away.
Jesse snorted. “Oh, she tried to be kind about it. Every birthday she’d sing for me. Colored lights at Christmas. Sit with me for hours and reminisce about the good old days.” He twitched, his face twisted with anger and pain. “All I could do was sit there while she rubbed my nose in her sweet little life. I couldn’t even beg her to kill me!”
Jocelyn tried to offer some kind of denial, but it died behind the gag.
He dropped to one knee and looked me in the eye. “Unable to move, or speak, or scream. Gettin’ fed soup and IV injections. Havin’ my goddamn diapers changed. Do you have any idea what it’s like?” He flinched, and the anger boiled over. “Then when he’s got me locked away, and she’s wrapped around his finger, ol’ Walter says she’s ready. Sponsorship into the Council. But only if she’ll make a few concessions. Marriage, babies, the usual Society crap. Make yourself a lovely little broodmare and look at the fine barn you get to live in! Whoring herself to an ancient old bastard!”
He shook his head, and his face softened again. “But little Edwin, he saved me. Getting pregnant distracts you. Momma can’t be looking in two directions at once. It took every ounce of magic, all my hate, and maybe a few years off my life, but I got out. I got free. I ran as far as I could. For a while I was happy, all I wanted was to be free, but Joce was always two steps behind me. I knew I’d never escape her, or them. She’d never do me the mercy of killing me, because she loves me. No. She’d pack me away in that box again. And I’d go back to… that. So I decided to run somewhere she and her stud would never find me.”
I took a breath. “Ascension.”
“Think about it, Alex, and tell me you’d do it differently in my shoes?”
I didn’t answer right away. My head was a murky swamp of exhaustion and shock. Jocelyn’s shoulders shook as she cried.
“Yeah, you’re tugging my heartstrings,” I said. “Ask these people how they feel about being trapped in their own heads. How they feel about being sacrificed on your altar.”
Jesse shrugged. “They’ll be free, too. These people had nothing. I offered them an escape from their shitty lives and they drowned themselves in it. What I’m about to do is a mercy.”
I bowed my head. Pain, dizziness and disgust thrashed about inside me like angry snakes. “You’re a psychopath.”
Jesse paused, his expression less certain than before, then he smirked. “Won’t matter in a few minutes.”
The worshipers rose their chant to a fevered pitch. Jesse went to stand before the bottles. The light within them had grown brighter, like bottled lightning.
“You gonna kill the kid too?” I asked. “That’s some uncle.”
“Oh, nah,” Jesse said. “No, no, Eddie’s my hero. I’m gonna take him with me. When he wakes, he’ll be like Adam. He’ll be a king in my world.” Jocelyn tried to scream, and he backhanded her. “Shut it, sis. I’ll show him more care than you ever gave me.”
Bettany took a mortar and pestle from her basket, and began to paint Jesse’s body with blood mixed with Stig. Binding his power to the souls of the people around him. As he did, the zombies began to emit a deep-throated, toneless chant.
Jesse’s necromancy pulsed from him, a hot wind that felt like poison. It was the bite of the rattlesnake, the sting of the scorpion. It made me nauseous, and my wounds itched.
A shadow spread outward from the totem, like a pool of black ink. Snake-like tendrils rose from it, hissing and thrashing. Whenever the black energy licked at the glass bottles, the life-force inside recoiled, darkened, and faded. Bottles cracked and imploded with each one devoured. A body crumpled to the ground among the zombies. Then another.
I had to do something. But what did I have left? No gun, no magic. I could barely throw a punch. My head lulled.
‘Alex!’ I saw Madelyn’s ghost being entangled in Jesse’s spell. It wrapped around her like ba
rbed wire, digging into her ethereal flesh, pulling her towards Jesse’s shrine. ‘Help!’
She wasn’t the only one. The worshipers, Tyler and the other thugs, and even Bettany had been ensnared by Jesse’s spell. They groaned and gasped, eyes wide with pain and shock. Jocelyn’s eyes rolled into her head as her chest erupted with light, her soul unmoored.
The magic hissed against my flesh like acid. My consciousness slipped in and out of my body, and I could see myself, head thrown back in pain as Jesse’s ritual tore the life away from me.
The skies above the boat split and cracked like glass. A portal to another realm opened, an entire world spreading out before me, so close I could touch it. I saw sun-bleached deserts dotted by black, jagged mountains, and lush oases with deep shadows. Mile-long centipedes crawled across the sands, and bat-like predators with scorpion tails soared amidst the mountains. I could even see people, primitive and cowering in the few areas of safety, helpless before the merciless heat and poisonous predators of their world.
A newborn dimension, and a perfect reflection of Jesse’s cruel, twisted soul.
‘Alex! ALEX!’
I tore my eyes from the alien world. Madelyn was almost to the altar. She screamed as Jesse’s black tendrils pulled her into a bottle, where she could be devoured, her face distorting and twisted. The scream reached a pitch that rattled me, in body and spirit. It was full of fear, pain, sadness and...
Holy shit.
The screaming. A scream that could buckle windows and shake dirt from the ceiling, a scream that came from the soul?
Her blood has a forgotten history.
Madelyn wasn’t an ordinary spirit.
A desperate plan formed in my brain. I pulled against Jesse’s power. Anger gave my weakened magic a boost, and I pulled until my soul felt like a peeling, bleeding piece of overripe fruit. The tendrils tore free and recoiled from me. The pain I felt made the color wash out of my vision for a moment, but I grabbed my pistol from Tyler’s limp hand.
Jesse didn’t look like himself anymore. With each soul consumed, he glowed brighter from within. It illuminated his heart and ribcage. His face was transparent and skeletal. He smiled at me with insane, lidless eyes.
“You can’t stop it!” He held out his arms. “Take your shot, you worthless nobody! Try to kill me now!”
Madelyn, can you hear me? I thought.
Madelyn was almost half-way into a bottle. The black magic had almost engulfed her.
I need you to scream, Maddie, I thought. Scream as hard and as loud as you can. Scream!
She didn’t respond.
On three. One, two-
I fired. The bullet ripped through Madelyn’s bottle, and it exploded. Seconds stretched out like hours as nothing happened.
Then Madelyn MacLaith—wight, zombie, banshee—erupted from the bottle.
She looked at me and screamed.
Every bottle on Jesse’s altar shattered into a cloud of glass. And then every window within half a mile splintered and cracked. Ears and noses bled as the living heard the cry of the mournful dead. Several women broke free of Jesse’s control and screamed with her, compelled by the banshee’s keening to share their grief.
Jocelyn cried out through her gag. Bettany’s face paled, and she dropped dead where she stood. It was the agony of a mother who had lost her children. The wail of a wife who would never see their husband again. The cry of a daughter whose parents would not come home.
I sensed Madelyn’s pain, the trauma of a girl whose life had been ripped away, and a twisted mockery left in its place. How scared and hurt and utterly alone she felt deep down, made worse by a cruel and uncaring death among strangers. It made my pain seem petty by comparison.
Her keening became a storm that broke the spell of drugs and black magic. Jesse fell to one knee, hands pressed to his ears. The screams of his victims drowned out his own. The zombies and thugs collapsed around us like dominoes, their souls ravaged by his magic. Freed spirits returned to their bodies, or faded from sight.
Madelyn’s keening ended, and her spirit disappeared. Her physical body collapsed with the rest.
Above us, the dimension forged in Jesse’s image blurred away to nothing, swallowed by the darkened skies. The lido deck fell silent as a grave. Eddie began to cry.
“No! No, no, no!” The light in Jesse’s body evaporated into the empty air, dulling him back to mere mortal status. He clawed at the shattered glass around him, shredding his fingers in an effort to snatch the evaporating power.
I pushed to my feet. “It’s over.”
Jesse’s eyes blazed. He snatched the assault rifle and aimed it at me. “Die!”
“Stop!”
Jesse convulsed. His body twisted as he strained against the sudden command.
“Stop, Jesse.” Jocelyn had freed herself, and pulled the gag from her lips. Her voice was cold but gentle. I could hear the lyrical notes to them, the hymn of her magic.
Jesse’s eyes bulged. He strained against her so hard his face turned red. “I won’t!”
“Stop, Jesse,” Jocelyn said. She approached, taking the teleportation bracelet from his pocket. “It’s time to go home. Let’s go home.”
I shook my head. “Jocelyn, get away from him.”
Jesse screamed, and Jocelyn’s hold on him shattered. He knocked her to the floor and wrapped his hands around her throat. “I’m not going back! You can’t make me!”
I took aim, but Jesse was faster, and opened fire with the rifle. I hurled myself into the pool, curled into a ball as bullets zipped through the water. A few heartbeats later, the gunfire ceased.
Empty, or waiting for me to surface? I wondered.
I needed something to fight with. A dry gun, a bit of magic, anything. I closed my eyes and tried to think.
I found the answer in the air above me.
I swam to the edge of the pool and peeked over the side. Jesse had Jocelyn in a two-fisted choke.
“Die! Just die!” His scream was hysterical.
I let myself relax. The spell I was about to try could make me pass out, or it could kill me. I’d sapped too much of my magic, but I knew where to get more. The rotten power of Jesse’s failed apotheosis, all that stolen life-force, still hung in the air. It was directionless and dissipating, but there was more than enough for what I needed. I reached out and took hold of it.
The energy crackled with that familiar, angry feedback. Pain rippled up my arm, but I held firm. Our wills—my own and Jesse’s—competed for control, but he had focused his wounded psyche on his sister.
I calmed my mind and swirled the magic in the air. I thought of rest, and comfort, and the cool, damp soil of a dark grave. There is no peace like it. The magic shivered in my grasp and changed. Dark shadows turned to wisps of fog around me.
I could have closed my eyes in that gloom and slept forever. But Jocelyn’s face had turned blue, so I pinched at Jesse’s mind with the magic I’d wrested from him.
“Wh-what?” He recoiled from the fog. Fear tore at his willpower. “Get away! Stop it, Alex! What are you doing?”
I crawled out of the pool. “Digging your grave.”
He screamed, and the fog flowed down his throat, into his soul. He gagged, choked, and fumbled over incoherent words. Then he collapsed onto his side, curled into a ball.
Jocelyn gasped for air and crawled to Eddie. She hugged the wailing toddler close, cooing and rocking him, but never took her eyes off her brother.
“What did you do?” She croaked.
The effort had taken almost everything left in me. The vertigo wouldn’t stop, and my entire body shook. “I put him to sleep.”
“Is he dead?”
“No.” I aimed my pistol. “But he should be.”
“No! Don’t, Alex! You’ve done enough!”
“He’s too dangerous, Jocelyn. You can’t control him anymore.”
“I can’t let you,” she said. “He’s my responsibility. Put the gun down.”
I felt
her words settle over my shoulders like a warm blanket. Everything she said sounded like the best idea I’d heard all day.
But my mind said no.
It was her magic. And it was familiar. Friendly, warm, and flirtatious. I had been so eager to help a beautiful woman with a problem that I hadn’t recognized it before. But now that I knew the real Jocelyn? The person behind the mask of charming smiles and vulnerable tears? My mind shivered at her touch. Who knew how long she had been using it? Using me?
I let the revolver drop from my hands. Maybe I could have fought Jocelyn, resisted her. But I was too damn tired. Of everything.
“Lady, let him go.”
Madelyn stepped in beside me. She was in her own body again, but her hair stood on end. It shifted in the air as if she were underwater.
Jocelyn frowned. “I’m not-”
“Bitch, I broke your brother’s godmode. What do you think I could do to you?”
Jocelyn glared at her, then shut her eyes and turned away.
“Everything he’s done, everything he might do? That’s on your hands.” I told her. When she didn’t respond, I shook my head. “C’mon Maddie, let’s get out of here before-”
Fire erupted from my chest. It surged out of me like a sun. It was pain, like nothing I’d felt before, and given my past few days, was a surprise.
Sheriff Agni stood between Jocelyn and I. “Alex Fossor, for your breach of the Edicts, I sentence you to death.”
And then my world was fire.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Death smelled like sterile bed sheets and medicine.
My everything hurt.
Light peeked through my eyelids. I tried to will it away, because I wanted to stay unconscious. But every sound was a nail hammered into my brain.
I opened my eyes in surrender. I was alive, somehow, in a windowless hospital room. A security officer sat on a bench just outside my room, reading a newspaper.
My face itched, but my arm was cuffed to the bed. The rattling alerted the guard, who sprang to his feet and spoke into his shoulder-mounted radio before he vanished out of my sight. I took the time to inspect my skin—what I could see of it under my various bandages—and saw that it was intact. The flames hadn’t even singed the hair.
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