Bonds and Broken Dreams (Amplifier 2)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  Ruwa was standing on the patio. The vestiges of the outfit she’d worn when pretending to be Aiden — suit pants, white dress shirt — hung from her far slimmer frame. She was barefoot, though, and her toes were oddly elongated.

  Paisley was pressed against Opal, pinning the young witch against the house. The demon dog still wore her regular pit bull aspect, but her red, glowing eyes were pinned to the sorcerer who’d just risen from the dead.

  Apparently, I should have double-checked. The magic-drained-and-not-breathing thing was usually a solid indicator.

  On Ruwa’s left, for some reason, Isa Azar had yanked Jenni Raymond behind him. I was surprised that the shifter hadn’t plunged the knife she still held aloft between the sorcerer’s shoulder blades. Then I saw the flickering shield Isa held as he slowly backed away, protecting them both.

  A terrible noise emanated from Ruwa. It skittered across my bones, prickling through every one of my nerve endings.

  She was laughing, her glowing red eyes almost perfectly matching the hue of Paisley’s blazing gaze. Her fingers were clawed, and far longer than normal. From the first elongated knuckle down, each digit appeared to have been dipped in darkness.

  My rational mind caught up to the sequence of events. I dove for the knife, hazarding a guess as to where I’d lost hold of it. I held my breath as I scrambled around, unable to actually see anything within the darkness of the swamp. Claws slashed across my left shoulder. The spells coating the suit jacket mitigated the blow. Another creature grabbed my right ankle.

  I couldn’t find the knife.

  Isa barked an arcane word, and another layer of magic slammed into place between him and Ruwa. Jenni, knife held at the ready, snarled something at him. Presumably, he had stopped her from attacking the red-eyed sorcerer. Paisley herded Opal farther along the deck, drawing a flicker of Ruwa’s attention.

  No, not Ruwa. I had killed Ruwa. Or at least I’d drained so much of her sorcerer magic that when her body had risen, it was the creature she’d bound to her that had taken over. A demonic entity — based on the red eyes, the claws, and the ability to change shape. I didn’t doubt that the ability to call forth such a massive pocket of another dimension was a product of that binding as well.

  Elbow deep in the sticky, seething swamp, my fingers brushed something hard. My hand finally closed over the handle of the knife. I spun, chopping blindly and wildly at the creature that held my ankle. It rose over me, all teeth and claws and red blazing eyes, dripping with the same slick, reeking, viscous fluids that coated my arms and legs.

  I hacked through the limb clamped to my ankle, rolling to avoid the demon’s attempt to bite my head off. I came up hard against another demon, blindly slashing upward, gutting it. A gush of acid blood spewed over my neck and torso, searing my skin. I ignored the pain, grateful that the suit had absorbed the brunt of it.

  I flipped back under a swipe from the first demon, lunging forward in the same motion and skewering it through one blazing red eye. A helpful target in the center of what I assumed was its head.

  It fell. Unfortunately, it took the knife with it.

  More claws slashed at me, drawing blood at my legs and herding me back toward the house.

  I caught one strike before it could tear out my throat. But laying my hands on demons didn’t do me any good. I couldn’t drain their magic any more than the nullifying cage could drain Paisley’s. Assuming magic was what fueled them in the first place, it wasn’t compatible with our dimension. Which made what Ruwa had done staggeringly inconceivable and incredibly idiotic — not just binding a demon to her will, but somehow forcing it to exist within her, alongside her, so she could draw from its abilities.

  A massive creature yanked me backward, pinpoints of pain from its claws piercing the suit. It lifted me off my feet. I slammed kick after kick to what I thought might have been its head. The blows slid off its slick, shiny, hard-shelled exterior.

  Ruwa shouted something — a command that reverberated through the half-dozen demons now surrounding me. The demon holding me aloft froze, its grip crushing both my arms.

  “The amplifier is mine,” Ruwa said, in English this time. “Bring her to me.”

  The smooth-carapaced, six-eyed demon that held me bared its jagged teeth, emanating a low snarl. The noise ran through me, scraping against my already perpetually wounded soul.

  Apparently, it had problems taking orders from the demon that inhabited Ruwa’s body.

  I tried to focus on its six eyes, three on each side of its snout. That was where it was most vulnerable.

  If I’d had a blade. If my arms hadn’t been in the process of being crushed in the demon’s grip.

  Magic shifted across my spine, pulling my attention over the demon’s shoulder. The darkness just beyond a cluster of skeletal trees parted, revealing Christopher and Aiden. The clairvoyant and the sorcerer were systematically slicing through any demon that sprang forward to hinder their progress. The slick, dense swamp parted around them so thoroughly that I could see packed snow under their feet.

  Both of them were shirtless, bare limbed — and completely covered in black-inked runes.

  Aiden could walk through Isa and Ruwa’s dimensional pocket. Of course he could. It had to be an Azar family spell. Though doing so had presumably taken a lot of prep.

  Christopher’s eyes glowed with the brilliant white of his magic as he wielded his short sword. Aiden had his bat, and my blades were in the sheath cinched across his back.

  I started laughing, then called out, “Took you long enough!”

  Christopher flashed me a grin, decapitating a creature resembling a scorpion crossed with a sheep that scuttled into his path. “Tag. You’re it.”

  I snorted. Then, ripping my right arm from the demon’s grasp, I thrust my hand forward, fingers clawed, and gouged out the three of its eyes within my reach. As they punctured, fiery liquid squirted from the red-hued orbs, searing the skin of my fingers down to the tissue and bone.

  The demon shrieked, momentarily shorting out my brain. Then it shook me hard and dropped me. I stumbled, falling to one knee but already spinning back to the house. Already moving, weaving through the swamp demons as they swarmed me. Again.

  Ruwa thrust her hand in my direction. I swerved, but the mass of magic she released slammed into my left shoulder, twisting me off my feet. I didn’t tumble face first into the swamp as expected, though. Instead, the spell writhed around me, pinning my arms, then yanking me off my feet once again. It pulled me high above the demons clawing for me, then started reeling me back toward the sorcerer.

  I struggled against its hold for a moment, then forced myself to relax. I was having a difficult time breathing, but I had to give my magic time to compensate, to build up a resistance to the sorcerer magic that the creature wearing Ruwa’s body still appeared capable of wielding.

  “We have to renew the dimensional spell,” Ruwa-who-wasn’t-really-Ruwa-anymore barked at Isa. “Take the shifter and the witch.”

  The sorcerer looked at her in abject terror. “Ruwa?”

  She laughed again. “Catch up, Isa.” Her mouth was too wide. The skin of her cheeks had split open but wasn’t bleeding. The demon shapeshifter she’d bonded with was somehow absorbing her, manifesting through her.

  Isa started muttering. Again.

  Whatever he was casting pissed the Ruwa creature off, pulling her focus. The spell holding me loosened. I glanced down. My bare feet were dangling only about a half-meter above a mass of demons. So many demons that all I could really see were teeth, claws, and a multitude of red eyes. I looked for Christopher and Aiden, about six meters away from me now. The runes etched across every visible section of their skin still shielded them from the demons and swamp.

  “Fine,” not-Ruwa growled. “I’ll do it myself.” She flicked the fingers of her free hand toward Opal.

  Paisley lunged forward, taking the spell in the chest. It picked the demon dog up and flung her through the windows into the blacked
-out living room. Opal screamed, covering her face and head, though most of the glass blew inward.

  “Ruwa!” Isa barked. “Stop. You will heed me.”

  She didn’t even turn her head at his command. She flicked her fingers a second time. Magic slammed against an invisible barrier that stood about a hand’s width from Opal.

  The young witch straightened, raising her bloody hands. “Screw you, demon spawn.” She’d crafted herself a protection circle, out of her own blood.

  A fierce, irrational pride flooded through me. Though I was going to need to teach her to not cut her hands.

  I grabbed the magic still holding me, knowing that my unnaturally inherited immunity would have had enough time to allow me to break it. I tore myself free of the spell holding me aloft, falling into the sea of demons waiting for me.

  “No!” Ruwa shouted.

  Then everything happened all at once, overlapped, blurred together.

  The demons swarmed me, teeth and claws rending the suit jacket and scraping my bare legs as I crawled through the swamp, focusing on the hum of Opal’s witch magic as if it were a beacon of hope.

  I was trampled, face pressed deep into the sickly swamp. But I kept moving, kept ignoring the pain, because the hum of Christopher’s magic was so near now that I could feel it emanating from me. He was using me as an anchor — specifically, using the blood tattoo that bound us.

  Magic exploded overhead — sorcerer magic by its tenor.

  Aiden.

  Demons exploded into a hail of flesh and guts and teeth, pelting against me. Hands yanked me back onto my feet. A blade was pressed into my hand. I wiped the clinging, choking demon muck from my face, spitting, then hacking out as much as I could from my mouth and throat.

  I could see again, though my eyes stung and watered. Aiden and Christopher had me sandwiched between them. Aiden was decapitating demons with almost lazy upward strikes of his rune-etched baseball bat. Magic exploded with each contact he made, the demons crumbling into ash from the neck down.

  Ash. So even standing within the swamp, we weren’t wholly in the demon dimension — unless maybe that was Aiden’s doing. A result of how he was walking through the dimensional pocket. Now that I was standing near him, I could feel cold snow under my feet.

  “Some help would be nice, Socks,” Christopher shouted.

  I pulled my second blade from the sheath on Aiden’s back. Magic sparked at my touch. The sorcerer had refilled one of the three raw diamonds on each black hilt, tying the weapons to me, sharpening their power. He glanced back at me, his shocking blue eyes cutting me. Magic simmered in their depths. He was barely holding onto his anger, violence etched into every muscle.

  I wanted to grab his magic, to match his unleashed violence with my own. But I didn’t.

  “Let me loose,” I snarled.

  Aiden and Christopher stepped to the side, revealing Ruwa, who was standing centered on the patio. She had somehow gotten her hands — her claws, now — on Jenni Raymond. The shifter was on her knees, head wrenched back, knife knocked off to the side. Claw marks scored her neck and chest.

  To the far right, Isa was regaining his footing, as if he’d been knocked down in whatever skirmish had just taken place. He was still in the middle of casting something that looked seriously complicated. Dark-blue power weaved around his hands and up his forearms. To the left, Paisley was crawling out of the broken front window behind Opal. She was the size of a lion now, her tentacle mane snapping and sparking, writhing around her head, neck, and shoulders.

  The young witch’s gaze was on me.

  I smiled.

  Opal swallowed hard.

  I started moving, pulling ahead of Christopher and Aiden within a couple of steps. I had been driven farther from the house than I thought.

  I slashed at any clawed limbs that reached for me, taking heads when they were in my way. But I left the bulk of the cleanup to Aiden and Christopher, homing in on my target.

  “I will kill her, amplifier!” Ruwa shouted, her voice a rough growl. The demon speaking through the vocal cords of the sorcerer.

  I kept moving.

  Ruwa raised her hand, blackened claws doubling the length of her fingers.

  I wasn’t going to make it.

  “Jenni!” I shouted. “She’s going to kill you either way. Now or in one of those pentagrams.”

  Jenni grimaced. Then her expression became determined, fierce.

  Ruwa struck.

  A monster ripped free of Jenni Raymond’s skin, all teeth and claws and light-brown fur. The shifter caught Ruwa’s hand on the down strike. She had opposable thumbs, but I doubted she could walk upright in the half-beast form she’d called forth.

  Jenni rolled with the hit, taking Ruwa with her. I heard bones snap, most likely Ruwa’s arm.

  And then Isa Azar unleashed the spell he’d been crafting. It snapped forward, wrapping around Ruwa with thick ribbons of electric-blue magic. Jenni scrambled away on all fours, taking up position beside Paisley, guarding Opal. The partially transformed shifter’s eyes blazed green. Her teeth were jagged within a completely misaligned jaw, and a scruffy coating of light-brown fur covered her hunched back. The half-form she’d called forth looked painful, but vicious.

  Opal laughed, an edge of rampant terror coloring her delight.

  Ruwa fought Isa, actually grabbing for the magic trying to hold her in place and yanking the sorcerer toward her, step by step. She was stronger than him.

  I forced my way past the last of the demons that held me back. My foot hit the first patio step, hidden beneath the oil-slick swamp.

  “Don’t kill her, amplifier,” Isa growled. “I need her to get us out of here.”

  I bared my teeth at him. But as Ruwa managed to break one hand free from the hold of Isa’s spell, muttering a curse aimed for me, I flipped my right blade in my hand, slamming the butt of the hilt into her forehead.

  She slumped.

  “Jesus.” Isa took a shuddering breath, swaying on his feet. He straightened, firming his grip on the magic he still held. Murmuring the same foreign phrase over and over again, he began twining the binding spell around Ruwa tighter and tighter, lowering her to the wood-slat patio once she was cocooned in his magic from her neck to her toes.

  Keeping an eye on the sorcerer, I stepped toward Jenni. “Been practicing, eh?” I asked her.

  She gurgled. Her face was a terrible mesh of animal and human. Then her blazing green eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed.

  Opal cried out.

  “It’s okay.” I leaned over, checking the fallen shifter. “The transformation has just exhausted her. Wait a minute …”

  Magic shifted over Jenni, reverting her to her naked human form. Paisley reached for her, tentacles tugging the shifter closer until the demon dog stood over Jenni protectively.

  Paisley had a seeping wound seared across her chest. The creature that was piloting Ruwa was an idiot. Or perhaps it was simply ignorant of the magic it could wield in its newly melded form. If it had hit Opal with a spell capable of hurting Paisley so badly that the demon dog’s natural healing ability still hadn’t sealed the wound, the young witch would have been killed. And a dead witch wouldn’t have powered the pentagram that was holding the dimensional pocket open.

  Aiden and Christopher stepped up on the patio. Aiden’s gaze was on Ruwa. Christopher crossed to me.

  “Stay in the circle,” I said, speaking to Opal but looking at the clairvoyant.

  His magic was so bright in his eyes that it had created a halo all around his head. He nodded in agreement, letting me know with a simple gesture that I was correct in my assessment — the battle wasn’t over yet.

  “I’m getting really tired,” Opal whispered.

  “Sit down,” Christopher said. “Slow your breathing.”

  “Meditate?” she asked doubtfully.

  I laughed quietly, not one for meditation myself. I stepped up beside Aiden, keeping my focus on Isa Azar.

 
; The older sorcerer was somehow tying off the spell he’d used against Ruwa. He stepped back.

  The human-demon creature lay between him and us, bisecting the covered patio.

  Isa leveled a look at his younger brother, eyeing the runes etched across every section of Aiden’s bare skin. “Impressive. But it took you long enough.”

  “I got suckered into your distraction for longer than I’d like to admit,” Aiden said. “The clairvoyant saw me clear.”

  “You nullified Ruwa’s spell on him, then. Also impressive.”

  Aiden gestured at Ruwa. The skin of her face and neck were cracked, split open, revealing a dark scaling under her human skin. “What have you done, Isa?”

  “So I’m immediately to blame for Ruwa’s attempt to bind a demon.”

  Aiden laughed harshly. “This is more than a binding.”

  Isa shrugged. “It was useful. And not my suggestion.”

  “Except she did it to get away from you, Isa,” I said.

  Both sorcerers looked at me, surprised.

  “She did it to break the binding you held on her,” I added, just to drive my point home. “She’d rather be bound to a demon than answer to you.”

  “You know nothing.”

  “I know she could have killed me, at least twice. And she didn’t because she thought I could help her break the bond.” I was guessing at the last part. Ruwa hadn’t actually articulated that request to me. But if I had loathed someone enough to try to kill them, I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be tied to them.

  Aiden went still beside me. His magic was coiling around him tightly, glinting from the black-inked runes that had allowed him to cross into the dimensional pocket. Hopefully, those same runes would help him get back out with the rest of us in tow. I didn’t need to look at his face to know he wore his inscrutable expression, trying to figure out how to deal with his brother and my revelations.