Sacrifice

by L. L. Frost

  Emil meets the new threat, daggers slicing. They’re less effective than the sword, taking longer to dismember the thrashing tentacles before he safely reaches the eye and cuts into it, spilling red fluid and slime.

  Tobias arrives at my side, concern tightening his lips. “We have to consolidate. Julian can’t keep his barrier spread this wide.”

  We retreat to Julian, and the pink mist tightens around us, becoming denser and harder to see through. Taking up the point that faces the back of the ward, I unsheathe my wings and spread them wide, ready to take on any drones that break through on this side.

  Flickers of light fill the room, a tingle running down my spine as the hag finally tears through to the Between. Gray mist billows out of the rip in reality, washing over the hag, Kellen, and Landon, swallowing them whole.

  My heart pounds as I stare at the empty circle where Kellen, Landon, and the hag stood only moments before. Gray clouds roll along the tiles, rushing outward before they come up against the witches’ circle and fold back on themselves.

  I resist the instinctive urge to rush after them. Landon warned us they would have to physically go into the Between to meet Aren and lock the cage around the Dreamer. I just never expected it to be like this. It feels like the Dreamer won, that it ate the people I love, and everything in me demands I get them back.

  “Adie, pay attention!” Julian yells, and I spin just as a drone flies straight at me.

  It slams into the barrier, its gelatinous body smashing inward and spreading wide, rupturing on impact. Another one comes right after, killing itself against Julian’s barrier, and cold gel slaps against my cheek. I lift a hand, startled, and it comes away wet and sticky.

  Another drone slams into the same place, fluid splattering through the barrier.

  I stumble back a step. “Julian, we have a problem!”

  “Don’t break the circle!” Emil yells.

  I flinch and glance down to find my heel only a foot away from the witches’ spell. It pulses with magic, anchoring the way back from the Between.

  More goo splatters my body, and my eyes travel the lines of tile, zeroing in on the runnels of gray ink that creep toward the circle.

  My eyes widen in horrified realization. “Tobias, I need you!”

  He burns through a drone before running to my side. Slime splatters his clothes, and his chestnut hair falls across his forehead in disarray. Black covers his eyes, blotting out the white.

  As he arrives, another drone slams forward, bursting on impact, and he growls. “Why are they doing that?”

  I point to the ink creeping along the grout lines at our feet. “Burn it.”

  Swearing, flame fills his hands, and he sweeps them downward. Black, stinging smoke fills the air as the ink burns, and Jax, the closest to us, coughs as he breathes it in. The light in the circle wavers, the tear between dimensions fluctuating.

  “Are you two trying to kill the humans?” Julian demands as he stabs another drone, his blade coming back thick with goo. It drips from the tip, joining the splatters on the floor.

  Terror rushes through me. If Tobias keeps burning away the ink that creeps through the barrier, he’ll asphyxiate the witches, and if he doesn’t, the ink will break the circle. “Julian, you have to push the barrier out again!”

  He scowls over at me. “They’ll get through if I do that!”

  “They’re getting through now!” Tobias risks another small spurt of flame, setting more ink on fire.

  It catches and grows, spitting noxious fumes into the air. Jax coughs again, joined by Reese, and the circle fluctuates harder.

  I grab Tobias. “Give me your shirt.”

  He yanks it off without question, and I drop to the floor, trying to wipe up slime. But the shirt just pushes it around instead of absorbing it and creates a bigger puddle. I shove it toward the edge of the barrier, but as more drones burst themselves against the walls, more ink seeps through.

  Frustrated, I look up at Tobias. “This isn’t working!”

  Flame dances in his hands as they clench in frustration, able to fix the problem but held back by the mortals we need to keep alive.

  My head jerks toward Emil. We need his ice. It could freeze the ink, slow its progress long enough for the others to return to the human plane. But its fractured power is the only thing holding the ley line magic inside me at bay.

  Another drone sacrifices itself against Julian’s barrier, slim splattering us, and its ink joins the growing stream. Tobias crouches, singeing another runnel of ink that creeps too close to the circle, and more smoke fills the air.

  If we keep this up, we’ll fall on this side, leaving the others trapped in the Between.

  Through force of will, I grab the ley line magic inside me, forcing it down, down, down, into a ball that burns in my core. The iridescent light fades from my skin until only flesh remains, and I hyper-speed to Emil.

  His eyes widen in surprise as I appear before him, cupping his cheeks. “You need to take it back.”

  Instant understanding registers, and he shakes his head. “No, you need it.”

  “I held it for the exact right amount of time. Now, I need to give it back.” I pull him down, our lips meeting, and release the ice ages back to their master.

  It rips out of me faster than it came, eager to return to Emil. Frost forms under my hands, his lips chilling against mine. He releases a shaky breath, and the air freezes in my lungs before I release him.

  White eyes stare down at me, the blue obliterated. His fingers trace my jaw, painting snowflakes on my skin before he turns away. Ice rushes outward from his feet, sweeping along the floor to circle the witches, freezing the ink in its path.

  Undeterred, the drones continue to crush themselves against Julian’s barrier, and the mist wavers as my cousin loses power. His magic was never meant to be used like this, not for this long. He pulls the mist in tighter, strengthening the walls and caging us in tighter.

  I stare at the rip into the Between. How long will it take for them to come back? Will we know as soon as the Dreamer’s locked up? Will the drones fall, or will they keep trying to break through, even cut off from their master?

  A clang and yell comes from my left, Julian’s sword spinning on the ground as a drone breaks through and grab him around the waist, pulling him toward the ceiling. As I take a step toward him, another tentacle breaks through the barrier right in front of me and wraps around my waist, yanking me toward a gaping maw of spinning teeth.

  My hold on the ley line magic inside me loosens, power rushing along my bones, tearing through my muscles and flesh to burst free.

  Sound whites out around me, a crackling buzz that blots out everything else.

  The drone that holds me disintegrates, the magic that rides me unmaking it in an instant. Without the will to take new shape, its form blips out of physical existence, but its energy remains. Purified by the destruction, it sinks through the floor, through the dirt and rock under the foundation, deeper and deeper until it joins the node of power that pools far beneath the building.

  I follow the drone’s death, feeling the joy as it becomes one with the magic of creation, strengthening the binds that hold our worlds together even as it gives up a piece of itself to the witches’ call, allowing the humans who fight with us to take it and reform it into something new.

  With this comes the realization the Dreamer didn’t choose this place to break through only because the inhabitants offered a ready food source. It chose it because humans made the Dreamer, and it can use the power node here to grow, to consume life faster than it did the first time it tried to wipe out humanity with its never-ending hunger.

  The knowledge sinks into me fully formed, along with the knowledge the witches won’t be strong enough.

  With new eyes, I see Kellen, Landon, the hag, and Aren weaving their magics together in the Between, forming a new cage. But even if they win this time, the cage will fail again, the Dreamer will return, and we might not be there to
stop it next time. Aren could be sundered, his power divided. The witches will die of simple mortality. Landon could give into non-existence, as some of the older demons do. The Library could consume the hag.

  Jax was right.

  We shouldn’t lock the Dreamer up. It’s a Band-Aid on a festering wound that will kill us in the end. But the witches aren’t strong enough, they’ll never be strong enough. Because they’re mortal.

  As Tobias frees Julian with a targeted blast of fire, more drones break through on the side of the barrier left unguarded, their tentacles dangerously close to Slater’s back.

  Ice rushes from Emil, freezing the monster, and the temperature in the room drops until every breath that leaves me forms a cloud in the air.

  Tobias sends out another blast of fire, and the slime and ink on the floor catch, black fumes rising.

  The witches shiver and cough, and Reese lifts one hand from the circle to cover his nose and mouth. The magic dims, the tear into the Between wavering.

  In defending the witches, we’ll kill them.

  I lift my hands. The same magic that powers the circle flows through me. With it freed once more, I hear the call of the spell, feel the desire to power it. I don’t need to be able to create the spell; Xander and Reese already did that. I just need to maintain it until the others come back.

  Like Jax said: I’m a walking ley line right now.

  Before I second guess myself, I run to Xander’s side and kneel beside him. His shoulders shake as he coughs, his lips blue from the cold. I reach for the circle, and his surprised gaze shoots to me, his lips parting in a protest that dies on the next breath as I make contact.

  A bell rings in my bones. Like a tuning fork finding alignment, the rolling, wild magic inside me stills. It stops destroying and remaking me as it finds new purpose, the witches’ circle giving it direction. It arrows down my arms, through my fingertips, and flows outward, solidifying the circle once more.

  I meet Xander’s wide eyes. “Take the others and go through the portal. You’ve done enough here.”

  “But we can–” Another harsh cough breaks him off, and tears roll from the corners of his eyes. Smoke clouds the air, growing thicker every time Tobias’s fire catches one of the drones.

  Around the circle, the others struggle to maintain their positions.

  “I have this. Trust me.” Gently, I curl one wing around Xander and shift him backward until he loses contact with the spell. It ripples for a moment, then brightens as my magic replaces his. “With you four out of the way, we can fight the drones without concern for your safety.”

  He stares around the room, at the weakening barrier and the careful way Emil and Tobias use their powers, before he slowly nods.

  Quickly, he runs around, collecting the others. As each man pulls away from the circle, it brightens, the pull on the magic inside me growing stronger.

  When Slater, the last of them, lifts his hands away, something clicks inside me, a sense of rightness. I nod to let them know I have it, that they’re safe to leave.

  The drones must realize something changed for us and pick up their attack. They come at us from all sides while, overhead, they crush themselves on the barrier, slime oozing through like some kind of horror movie jello rain. It spits and sizzles where it hits the circle, but the magic holds strong.

  Slater and Jax grab Reese and run for the portal, but Xander stops beside me. Heedless of my sharp wings or the acid slime that rains down, he bends and whispers in my ear, his words almost lost through the crash of battle.

  I nod in understanding, and he squeezes my shoulder before chasing after his friends.

  “Are you sure about this?” Julian demands as he watches them vanish.

  I stare at the strong, glowing circle then at the drones that swarm around us. “I got this. You just worry about killing every single one of those things.”

  Julian, Emil, and Tobias exchange vicious grins, and Julian’s barrier splits, one part forming a tight bubble around me and the circle while the other guards the portal out.

  Julian vanishes in a blur of motion, drone bodies falling in pieces in mid-air.

  Fire and ice flow out unhindered in an elemental dance of raw power. Heat and cold rush past me, glorious in the primal destruction.

  Inside the rift, another battle rages, the Dreamer’s enormous body slamming against the cage of power Aren, Kellen, Landon, and the hag weave around it. The bands of energy form like lattice, soaring into the sky then bending inward, trapping the Dreamer and hundreds of drones. It forms slowly, a tapestry of lightning, butterflies, and nightmares, as the Dreamer’s enormous, eye filled tentacles slam against it. Drones not trapped within bombard them from the outside, only to be caught in one of the hag’s portals and cast into the cage.

  The power inside me drains steadily. Unlike the node beneath the building, the magic I hold is finite. It drags through my bones and flesh, scraping out parts of me as it fuels the spell, and I will our people to hurry.

  More drone bodies fall around me, sliding off the protective barrier to land on the floor only for the tiles to rip open and consume them.

  Few remain, and they hover near the ceiling, ripping open the egg sacks to free the baby drones not yet ready to hatch on their own in a last-ditch effort to survive.

  The smaller eyeballs tumble free, small, translucent tentacles spiraling to life with a single-minded need to feed.

  Hundreds of them fill the room, their hunger a steady buzz. Wary of the new threat, Julian, Emil, and Tobias retreat into the barrier around me, the space tight as they struggle not to cross the circle.

  Julian stabs through the pink mist, but the smaller drones roll out of the way faster than their larger predecessors. Tobias throws out a ball of flame, catching only a few as the others spin out of the fire’s path. Emil’s ice meets with similar results.

  Seeing us weakening, the larger drones swoop in, and the babies turn on them, their hunger owing no allegiance. They devour their brethren, growing in mass and strength. Soon, hundreds of full-sized drones swarm the room, more than when we first entered, the battle reset in their favor with our people weakened.

  Tobias clenches his fists in frustrated anger. “This isn’t working.”

  “It would be easier to just blow the whole place up.” Julian glances down at me. “How are you doing, Adie?”

  “I’d like them to hurry,” I say through gritted teeth.

  “Can you hold it?” Emil demands.

  I nod grimly as more magic flows out of me, dissolving bones from my wings to power the spell. I give them freely. My wings mean nothing compared to getting Kellen and Landon back, and buying Aren time to return to Dreamland. Even the hag, for all her snark, means more than the wings I earned through death and destruction. If need be, I’ll give everything I have to hold the rift open.

  As if the magic heard my vow, the glow in my skin brightens, the power chewing through my flesh until it turns transparent. I squeeze my eyes shut, focusing on wrapping my will around the magic, willing it to slow down.

  I didn’t mean I’d give everything right now.

  “Well, this looks like a shit show,” a grumpy voice says, and my eyes snap open once more.

  The hag stands in front of me, Landon and Kellen a step behind her.

  “You did it,” I gasp out before my vocal cords dissolve, but I don’t care. They’re back, we won. I can make new vocal cords once we return home.

  Relieved, I lift my fingers from the circle, the way Xander instructed to cut off the flow of power. Without the magic, the rift will close, sealing the way to the Between.

  But when I lift my hands, strings of magic stick to the circle, the spell still active.

  “Adie, stop powering the circle,” Tobias commands, his voice harsh.

  I look up at him, eyes wide with panic. I try to speak, to tell them to run as the magic swells inside me, but my throat can’t form the words.

  The hag shakes her head and grabs Kellen and La
ndon. “Time to go boom, kiddo.”

  As the three vanish in a rush of portal magic, my gaze shifts to Julian.

  In a blur of motion, my cousin grabs Emil and Tobias and hyper-speeds them through the barrier, past the sea of drones, and escapes through the portal at the doorway.

  The second part of the spell engages, dragging my hands back down to the circle. Xander warned me to leave before this happened, but the ley line power refuses to listen as it rushes to fill the drawing at the center of the circle.

  The witches never planned to stop at a simple cage for the Dreamer. Like me, they realized it would come again and planned to prevent that from happening.

  I squint as the Ouroboros comes to life, a giant, glowing serpent bent on devouring.

  The magic rips out of me, the last of my wings disintegrating, then flesh and bones, until all I am is a ball of energy once more.

  Then, it takes that, too, as the Ouroboros flows into the Between, hungry and destructive, pulling me with it.

  My being merging with the snake, giving it thought and purpose to go along with its hunger. We’re two of a kind, the snake and me. Both creatures of need. I know well the bottomless ache that demands to be filled, the desire to be satiated.

  We flow toward the cage, so carefully created by the others. It’s beautiful and shining, its bars designed of storms and thunder, of nightmares and endless loops that cast its prisoners back on themselves. A maze that can never be solved, with bars that eat the inhabitants.

  But the cage has weaknesses, as all cages do, and the Dreamer has all of eternity to find those spots and exploit them. As long as people can reach the Between, the Dreamer is a threat.

  With one thought, the snake and I coil around the cage, adding to the power that flows through it, strengthening the bars until they merge into a solid, glowing ball of light.

  It takes all of our magics, those provided and those ripped from the world around us, consuming to fill a hunger that will never be appeased.