Transmuted

by Karina Cooper

  Empty clothing, free of burns or stains, fell to the stone floor.

  Five circles, four at each direction and one in the center, blazed with searing, colored light. Blue, white, an eerie shadowed black, red, and at Lài’s feet, gold.

  The blessings of immortality came at the cost of lives. Ashmore, who had sacrificed those of his own line, knew this.

  He had come to regret.

  Lài did not appear to be the sort to bother with such emotional attachment as regret. The drum beat a rhythm steady and slow, eerily calm compared to the panic that swallowed me. Within the white circle, Hawke’s back bent, his face thrown to the sky as he roared his rage and desperation to the moon above.

  Zylphia could not move thanks to the bonds forcing her compliance, but she hunched over her belly as much as she could, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  At long last, Zhànzhàn gained her feet.

  She stared at me. Me.

  And then hard at the madman in the center.

  “Brother.” An English word, directed at Ma Lài. That surprised me, for I had thought that they would speak in their own tongue when with each other. “What you do is madness!” Lài ignored her, once more reaching into his robes. The light reflected off the gold woven within, dancing demonic red and blue, green and white and mingled shades in between. “The Yellow Dragon must not stand alone,” she yelled, hands pressed together. “Brother, you need balance!”

  Balance.

  Balance! Of course.

  Bacatus-Typhonwas the Trump I’d called on to forge a bond between myself and Hawke once before. We had faced each other in the circus ring, him bound and myself forced to play the knife-thrower to his target.

  Blinded as I was, I’d not had any choice but to hope the bonds of duality, the Trump that marked adversaries and balance would allow me to overcome.

  Would the same forge a bond between the twins? The light and the dark, the Yellow Dragon and the Azure? Division and duality, as evidenced like nothing else in the brother and sister whose bonds had turned to enmity.

  If I could force that connection, would it skew this alchemical intent? Could she influence him?

  I had no choice but to try.

  Throwing my hair back, I straightened in my prison of crimson light and sketched the letter B into thin air.

  “Bacatus-Typhon,” I shouted, and the letter glowed vibrant white.

  Streams of silver threads gathered over Lài’s head. Tendrils looped about his forehead, his throat. Streamed from his hands to wrap in like bondage around his sister.

  Her lips curved. Up. A smile.

  Her eyes flared wide.

  Triumph filled them.

  I was given only a second’s grace to wonder at it before the bonds snapped taut, and then vanished altogether.

  “Yes,” the brother said, and from his mouth, wrapped around his own tone, echoed his sister’s voice.

  “Yes,” said Zhànzhàn at the same time, and from her lips, her brother’s echo. “We see,” they said in unison. “We see it now.”

  As one they turned to face me. In the brother’s hand, a flask of cinnabar—one I recognized. She had used the very same when mending Ashmore.

  Both smiled.

  Both raised a hand as though toasting me, but only one held something to toast with. How easily I had been duped.

  Through the haze of red light separating me from the others, I had no trouble reading the wild elation carved into each face. “You tricked me!”

  Though I aimed this at Zhànzhàn, both laughed. “You are easy to manipulate, Miss Black,” they said in harmony. “Now we live as one face, and the balance is maintained. You have been,” they added, inclining their heads in perfect accord, “a most valuable pet.” With this, both raised their hands to their mouths, but only the one drank. Transmutation.Within the alchemist’s own body, the reaction could be held, and then shared.

  Between the siblings, one half each of the Karakash Veil, a soul merged. The ground under my feet fell away. The air simmered, lightning formed of purple quintessence crackling across the circle.

  The moon’s face tinged yellow.

  In three of five circles, the unwilling sacrifices we had become screamed in unison.

  Chapter Thirty

  Lifted into the air, we were held immobile by magics I did not understand. The alchemy of the situation was readily apparent, but what forces stripped us of our mobility seemed too much like sorcery for me to truly comprehend.

  All I knew was that I could not escape this circle, and my limited knowledge of alchemy restrained my ability to help.

  The rhythm of the drum I heard increased. Within it, I heard something like bells, and this seemed so out of place as to force upon me a measured silence within my own thoughts where I might gather them.

  Where did the music come from?

  Where did the magics go?

  As though every second were so much longer, the world in slow motion, I turned my head. Five circles of color and pain. Aether that lashed between them.

  Five Phases.

  Five elements.

  Three companions.

  One Veil.

  Three.

  Ashmore’s voice rang in my ears. Remember your lessons.

  The symbolism behind Caeles-Isis, the High Priestessin Ashmore’s Tarot, was that of divinity. Its number was three, as Isis who brought her slain husband to life to conceive her son.

  The God of the Waxing Year and the God of the Waning Year, set neatly with the Threefold Goddess in between.

  A trinity.

  Bonds of magic lashed at me as I struggled to lift a hand. It hurt, as though forcing my way through immovable stone, terrible resistance; my broken fingers were as shattered glass ground into bone, but I set my teeth and willed my body to obey my commands. My commands.

  Not any magic’s, not any villain’s.

  As my hair floated about my face in a crimson cloud, I willed my gaze to Hawke, forced my eyelids wide when all my body wanted to do was curl up, give in.

  Surrender.

  I refused.

  In the circle nearest me, Hawke’s gaze rose to mine. Clashed.

  Held.

  As my hand came up between us, his teeth bared in vicious warning—the rage that carved of his features a monstrous mask cracked in raw anguish.

  Even knowing what I knew of his fury at the end of this, I would not sit idly by.

  Before my common sense could regain control of my limbs, I threw all my strength into that hand.

  It pushed through the pressure forcing it back, fraction by fraction carving a path through vermillion light.

  When my palm met the barrier of the circle’s edge, fire bloomed around it. I clenched my teeth, but a ragged rasp of a throttled scream choked me.

  Hawke shouted something; I couldn’t hear what.

  With greater ease than I, he thrust his hand against the silvery gleam of his own prison.

  Sparks shot. Flesh blackened.

  Before I lost my nerve, before the pain of blistered flesh, of nerves peeled raw and set aflame stole what was left of my resolve, I forced the letter Cinto the barrier’s edge.

  “Caeles,” I rasped, “Isis.”

  The world paused. Simmered. And with it, I took a breath.

  It was as though I became a conduit for the flame surrounding me. As though I poured all of myself into the Trump I named, turned flesh and blood over to the fire until it all boiled and frothed away.

  Somehow, as agony became a cacophony too much for my senses to devote any more effort to, the pain that filled me eased. I rode upon it as if it were a current, and I the bit of flotsam carried on the wave.

  I could never wholly explain it, but in that moment, I became light.

  In the prison of silvery incandescence, I filled Hawke’s skin. I stepped into his flesh and his bone, into rage and hunger and a hopeless, wordless devotion that had never been spoken between us.

  I became man and muscle and beast.
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  Somewhere outside space and time,I pooled like blood into Ashmore’s cupped hands. Glowed like a lantern in the darkness of his guest room above the drift and lit his face with gentle grace.

  “Good girl,” he whispered, and bore me to his chest. “Take what you need.”

  I sank into heart and power.

  My fingers plunged through flame.

  Crimson light flickered.

  In the greater circle, a cinnabar flask dropped to the stone. It cracked, leaking silver liquid.

  Four sets of empty clothing burned to ash.

  It wasn’t enough. Whatever magics had been called, it wasn’t enough. As though the circle made of the earth a wound, a seeping lesion bleeding aether, the power drawn by the twin dragons erupted from underneath us.

  As one, Hawke, Ashmore and I staggered. Our hearts squeezed, cramped.

  High up in that darkened bedroom, Ashmore seized.

  I hacked. Blood spilled from my mouth.

  It bore the metallic tang of minerals not meant to be ingested.

  The three of us, bound as we were, weren’t enough.

  I slammed the other hand into the other side of my prison. The blisters on my fingers bubbled to my palm.

  This time, three voices merged in seared agony.

  Zylphia’s head jerked up.

  “Caeles,” I managed, but the raw wound of my throat welled with blood, and I could not complete the call.

  I could not, but somewhere in the overwhelming consciousness that I had become, Ashmore reached a trembling hand to the ceiling and drew a letter into the dark.

  It burned with a light that smoldered.

  “Caeles-Isis,” he commanded, forging a second bond.

  The three goddesses, the trinity of maiden, mother and crone. From Isis came Demeter, and she the equal of Kore the Virgin and Persephone the Crone. Their power supported each other, and so did Zylphia’s heritage rise to mine—a wash of power cool and still and alien to me, as a grave so old that only the spirits knew it remained. The salty taste of blood washed away beneath the tingling burn of exotic peppers, of spice and the fragrance of smoke.

  Red became the color of my sight.

  I laughed. Laughed and laughed as though possessed of a spirit, and the sound in my head was that of a man’s, deep and rich and lush. Listen to de banda, drawled a voice so harmonious, bursting with an untold power, that I could not resist its rhythmic lure.

  Music played for me, though nothing of the sort was true. A rhythm, a dance, a stirring of the blood.

  I could burn them all. Force this pitiful circle to be a prison for everyone within and consign their souls to the spirits beyond.

  I could feed the spirits with but a wish.

  Zylphia was so much more than I had ever thought. This blood of her people, saturated in death, and still, she loved.

  Still, she had made of herself a place in my heart, knowing what it was to hold such power. She could have been anything, done anything.

  “But,” she said, and how she spoke, I did not know because she remained bound and gagged. Yet here we stood together. “Power is a burden. I choose to live in freedom.”

  To make of our own a family.

  The life she carried, the scars she bore.

  The mother she would become.

  Zylphia embraced the bond between us, and together, we pushed against the circle. Pushed until flesh began to crack and curl and pain threatened to tear free the threads that bound us all.

  My dove.

  If Zylphia was the mother to my maiden, then there could only be one crone—a woman of such wisdom and patience as to be a saint.

  I would never be able to say for certain that Fanny came to me in those moments. Ghosts were things that took certain circumstances to create, to enforce, and I would never entrap Fanny into such a prison.

  But she had raised me to be strong. To make of myself a confident woman.

  She had loved me as my own mother had not.

  Whatever this revelation forged, such was the duality of two trinities entwined—a complex knot that bound us so tightly together, not even a dual-headed dragon could assail it.

  With a sudden surge of pressure, a whooshing noise that roared through the night and a typhoon that tore free, the vermillion prison around me shattered outward. As though glass exploded in a thousand glittering shards, Hawke’s followed.

  Zylphia’s.

  The blue ring around Zhànzhàn’s crumpled body.

  We all fell to the floor, graceless and jarring.

  Only the gold remained, Lài locked with arms raised and golden robes reflecting wild light. The seam around the outer circle flared so bright that I was forced to clench my eyes closed in defense.

  A single drumbeat rang out. Its report sounded suspiciously sharp.

  For a heartbeat—a string plucked between us all—silence reigned.

  I cracked open an eye.

  The light was gone. The glowing rings, gone.

  Lài lay folded upon the floor, mouth slack, skin tinged gray. He did not move.

  Every inch of me ached. Every patch of my skin felt abraded by sandpaper.

  And yet, I could not let it be.

  I did not know exactly how I managed to crawl across the floor, how I found the strength, but I did. Fumbling at his body, my fingertips blackened, I struggled to find a pulse.

  A sign of life.

  Anything.

  From outside the shattered ring, a deep voice boomed an order. “Get them out!”

  Communion.

  Relief filled me. “He’s dead,” I said, but my throat would not form a proper voice. Torn ragged, it came out a hoarse whisper that broke.

  As I looked down into the sunken face before me, it divided abruptly into two.

  I had no time to brace myself. Drained of all I had left, no longer bolstered by the alchemy of souls I’d called together, I pitched over.

  The last I recalled was the stench of rot.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I was warm.

  Lassitude filled my limbs, and as I took for myself a breath, a fragrant spice filled my nose. Familiar.

  Alive.

  A heartbeat thundered against my cheek.

  I opened my eyes slowly. Gray light dripped slowly into form, outlining rafters, worn furniture of a vaguely familiar shape. A window, its latticework gathering what faded light pressed within and disseminating it gently into the room.

  The skin cradled beneath my palm jumped, a muscle flexed as my fingers twitched. They did not hurt.

  A hard hand locked against the back of my head, fingers thrust into my hair. A masculine murmur rumbled through Hawke’s chest as he drew me tight against him. “You are reckless.” My lips eased into a smile against the hot skin of his chest. Turning my head a fraction, I pressed my mouth against the flesh protecting the strong beat of his heart.

  We lay in a bed I only vaguely remembered as belonging to one of the Bakers’ places of safety; a room above some pub or such. The bed was too narrow for us both, but Hawke had made the most of it by ensuring I lay sprawled half-on him.

  I could only assume he’d laid me to rest, for I wore nothing, and this seemed rather suitable to Hawke’s preferences.

  His fingers edged into my scalp, easing shivers down my spine. The lassitude in my limbs only deepened, making of me a boneless thing.

  His large, warm hand spanned over my hip.

  Wait, no, this was too comfortable. I elbowed myself up, shoving the loose curls of my hair from my face. The length only reached my shoulders. The ends caught in my vision were singed.

  The sound I made earned a narrowing of Hawke’s dark lashes. Amusement flitted into his tawny stare.

  “What happened to my hair?” I wailed.

  His hand flattened on my back, strong and warm; my arm buckled and I had no choice but to be cradled against his naked side once more. “I happen to like it.”

  “You are an incorrigible thing.” I slid a leg along his.r />
  “I have,” Hawke said in his typical direct manner, “spent too long braving fire and flame for you.” And worse, the lash, whose scars lingered. I vowed to kiss every one in hopes to soothe any haunt from them, but he was too heavy to move, and did not seem inclined to turn over to allow me the fancy.

  Blowing errant curls from my face, I sent him a look framed by an arched eyebrow.

  “Does this mean you will cease?”

  He caught my chin. “Never.” But before the sculpted shape of his lips could touch mine, one black eyebrow eased up. “When did you learn to mimic me, Miss Black?” Confused, I drew back, brow furrowing. “The last thing I want to do with you, Micajah Hawke, is mimic you.”

  Again, that glint of amusement, sharp as blades. “Oh?” To my surprise, he eased a thumb over my eyebrow. “We shall see.” And then, making of my will a limp thing, he drew me to him. My body slid against his, my breath mingled with his own. As his mouth closed over mine, a kiss as gentle as I had never known it from him, my heart swelled.

  In a move that nearly sent us both tumbling over the edge of the borrowed bed, he turned me over, trapped me beneath his golden body, and stripped of me any inclination to do aught but savor his attentions.

  If I were concerned about his apparent introduction to placidity, he divested it of me with a gratifying savagery that assured me the beast and the man were still the same. He took me with a devastatingly deliberate roughness, with a knowing hand and whispered words that drove me again and again into sweet madness.

  There were no words of love between us.

  We needed none.

  ***

  Much later, I held a tankard filled with a brew Communion swore would put strength back into my limbs and starch back into my spine. I wondered if it would also put hair on my chest. The stuff was vile.

  I sipped it with determination as Ashmore, fresh off his own sickbed, folded his long limbs into the chair across from me. The pub wasn’t so much open for business as it was open for Communion and his friends, and the man who leased it had cheerfully stepped out to give the Baker the run of it.

  So it was that we had made of the shabby interior something of a reunion.

  It had been three days since the alchemical sorcery that had nearly cost us all our lives.

  I had learned that Ashmore had gone unconscious during the events, and that Lord Piers had been quite beside himself with concern for the man—and by extension, for me. After Ashmore’s waking some full day later, the earl had plied him with enough brandy to drown a bantling in.