Legion

by Catrina Burgess

  The pretty young death dealer wrapped gauze around Darla’s arm. Then she reached her finger into the cup, grim concentration lining her face, and smeared the blood on Darla’s forehead and cheeks. The girl dipped her fingers again and then drew another symbol on each of Darla’s arms.

  Darla took the cup in one hand and the sword in the other and started toward the pentagram.

  The robed death dealers moved closer together and began to chant. As their voices rose, the wind began to whip through the trees.

  Darla now stood on the outside of the pentagram. “Ready?” she said, looking at me.

  My arms tightened around the child. This is madness. “Ready,” I said with trembling lips.

  Darla shouted out a string of words. It wasn’t Latin. Was it Gaelic? During the last ritual, the spell had been in Gaelic. I didn’t understand a word of it, but somehow when I started to say the words the spell had taken over and foreign words spewed from my mouth. Was this spell like that one?

  Luke said they’d been searching for a spell to banish the demon since I’d let the creature loose. How long had Darla had this spell tucked away and ready to use? She'd had plenty of time to practice the words of the spell until she could say them with confidence. There was no hesitation whatsoever in Darla as she stood before us, chanting away the words.

  The air around us took on a red hue as a heavy mist began to fill the clearing. Darla took a deep breath, let it out, and then walked into the pentagram. There was a sudden bright flash of light, the wind began to roar, and the flames of the candles shot up into the air. But I realized in a moment of horror that it wasn’t just the wind I felt brush against my skin. I could feel ghostly fingers caressing my hair and the backs of my hands. I could hear whispers slide across my ears. I physically froze as I realized more than a dozen spirits were swimming all around us.

  I looked up at Darla as she stood over me.

  Why hadn’t she told me there would be spirits involved in this spell? Why was she being so secretive about this ritual? Because she still doesn’t trust you. The words whispered in my ear.

  Darla pointed to the altar.

  I knew she wanted me to pick up the child and lay her across the altar. It was all part of the spell. I felt that overwhelming sense of foreboding again. This wasn’t right; I needed to stop this ritual before it was too late. I faced Darla and started to speak.

  But before I could get a word out, Darla waved her arms and shouted out. The blood symbols on her arms began to glow, and a wave of cold washed over me.

  The spirits around me began to pull on my clothes and my hair. I tried to cry out, but no noise came from my mouth. My arms and body went limp, and I dropped down next to Jamie on the ground.

  I watched in horror as Darla stood over me, waving the sword in the air. With each word she spoke, the wind grew stronger. When the gale seemed like it couldn’t grow any stronger, she stopped chanting and gave me a wide smile.

  “The circle must be complete,” she said.

  I realized that this had been her plan all along. This was why she’d kept Luke away. I was an idiot to have ever trusted her.

  Darla planned to sacrifice me tonight.

  It was no small feat for Darla to drag me over to the stone altar and pull my body slowly up onto it. I never would’ve thought her strong enough, but she somehow managed it, and all I could do was helplessly watch. The spell had completely paralyzed me—I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak.

  Once Darla got my body on the rock, she moved back toward Jamie. She picked up the motionless child and carried her over to the altar. She laid her down on top of me.

  Darla moved slowly around us. She arranged Jamie so her arms and legs were directly over mine. We both lay face up and spread-eagle on the rock.

  “I’m sorry I have to do this.” It was Darla’s voice. I could feel her breath on my neck. “But it has to be done. Colina, your blood must be shed along with the child’s.”

  The truth hit me like a thunderbolt. She was about to kill us both. Everything inside of me was screaming to move, to get free, but I was a prisoner inside my own body. Anger and fear rose in me. My ears were listening for my spirit pack howling on the wind, but there was nothing. Nothing but the sound of Darla’s people chanting in the background.

  Darla whispered in my ear, “I’m afraid I told a bit of a fib. The spell Luke’s doing is not to bind the demon if he gets out of the pentagram. It’s to bind you. Your magic won’t work, not for a short while. It will be long enough for me to sacrifice you both. Luke doesn’t know he’s betraying you. The fool is still in love with you, but not for long. He’ll mourn for you, but he’ll get over it. I’ll be by his side. I’ll help him move on. “

  I felt a sharp pain and a burning sensation as the knife sliced across my right wrist, and then a few seconds later I heard Jamie cry out and felt her hot blood slide down my arm.

  Jamie was making noise, which meant whatever spell Darla had done to me hadn’t been done to her. Jamie could break free. She could run away, get help.

  But she didn’t move.

  Darla moved to my other side and sliced my left wrist. Both wrists now throbbed as my blood dripped down my skin and onto the rock. I tried to move, but I was still frozen. Storm clouds swirled above, blocking the moon, and a drop of water hit my face. It was starting to rain.

  Darla’s face appeared above me, blocking my view.

  “I’m sorry it has to end this way, but you have to understand. This is the only way to keep us safe.” Darla clutched the sword in both hands.

  I could feel Jamie’s head underneath my chin. Run, Jamie! Get away! I screamed the words over and over in my mind. But Jamie was not a reader. She couldn’t hear my thoughts. She lay against me, and I could feel her body trembling in fear. She was too scared to move. Too scared to try to save herself. There was no one coming to our rescue. Darla had made sure no one who might help us would be around to see her wicked deeds. After she'd killed us both, how would she explain it to her brother? Would she lie to him and tell him it was a spell gone wrong? Tell him the demon had killed me in the pentagram before she could come to my aid?

  Darla raised the sword up into the air and pointed it at my throat. “First you must die, and then the vessel. The circle must be complete.”

  I was about to die. After all I’d been through, all the horrible things I’d survived, this was going to be the end. My thoughts went to my family, to my friends. To Luke.

  Why hadn’t I tried harder to make things right between us? Everything I’d done since he’d died was to bring him back to me. But yet somehow those feelings had been pushed aside by the fear I had for Caleb. They were buried deep down inside me. The face of Caleb had scared me so much that I hadn’t been able to look past it. Why couldn’t I see past the dark parts of Caleb? Why couldn’t I see Luke?

  Darla had tried to tell me her brother was still the same, but I knew it wasn’t true. But did it matter that he’d changed? I had changed. I was so different now from the girl I had once been. So many things had happened over the last year. He was still in there, still fighting to find his way through a sea of angry emotions. I could have helped him, but instead I pushed him away. A teardrop slid down the corner of my eye. Now there was no time left to make things right.

  The metal tip of the sword poised above me, sparkling in the candlelight. The blade moved down until I felt the tip of it pressing against my throat. It would take but one thrust, and the sword would pierce my throat.

  Darla looked up into the sky and started to shout out the words of a spell.

  I closed my eyes and waited for the end to come. There were so many things I’d left undone. Too many wrongs I couldn’t undo. My spirit would be like my mother’s, wandering restlessly between this world and the next for an eternity.

  Darla’s voice suddenly stopped chanting. I opened my eyes to see her look over her shoulder and scream, “No!”

  And the world around us exploded.

 
; I was thrown into the air, and my body crashed hard on the ground. I lay there, my ears ringing, my mind confused, my body bruised and bleeding. I tried to move but found that I was still paralyzed.

  People moved and yelled around me, and then Luke’s face was hovering over mine. “Colina!”

  I blinked, and Luke’s face disappeared. The back of my head began to throb. I could feel tears sliding down my cheeks. I wanted to scream out that Darla tried to kill me. I wanted to run away, but all I could do was lay there and pray for Luke to come back. The throbbing in my head increased; it felt as though my skull was going to explode. A coldness spread through my body and limbs.

  This is how I’m going to die, I thought. Alone, lying broken and bruised on the ground with demon poison coursing through my veins. This is the karmic payback for all the things I’ve done. All the harm I've caused.

  I wondered, when I was in spirit form, would Luke be able to see me? Hear me?

  The cold eased, and a tingling, like a sleeping limb awakening, spread through my whole body. I instinctively tried raising my hand to rub my aching face, and it moved. My hand moved. I gathered my will and heaved myself into a seated position. My movements were wooden. I seemed to have limited control.

  Around me, chaos reigned. Luke stood facing down the two young death dealers, fire dripping from his hands. Puddles of it flowed away from him like burning oil. Blackened earth crossed the line of the pentagram, breaking its power. That explained why the spell stopped—Luke must have burned through the pentagram’s border.

  As I watched, dozens of banshees swirled into existence and rushed toward him. The death dealers were raising their banshees to attack Luke. Fires flared high around him, and his flaming banshees raced to meet the challenge, more terrifying than any banshees I’d seen. These were not the lost souls of other death dealers stuck between worlds and bound—instead they were damned souls, ripped from across the veil by Caleb’s horrible power.

  Smoke and ash filled the air, and as the banshees met, bone-chilling screams added to the hellish scene. The weaker banshees faded and disappeared as they met the damned ones, and soon the death dealers were fleeing, their cloaks smoldering as Luke’s damned banshees chased after them.

  Darla lay beside the altar, moving groggily, obviously stunned by the breaking of such a powerful spell. She grasped at the earth around her, looking for the hilt of the sword that lay inches from her outstretched hand.

  I tried to rise and stop her, but I still didn’t have the strength to get to my feet. I flopped back to my side and then rolled to my knees in frantic haste. Blood roared in my ears, and I almost collapsed again. Darla, however, had managed to grasp the sword and rise to her feet. She leaned unsteadily against the altar, looking at me with hot eyes. Her focus shifted to the child, who lay curled on her side, holding her sliced wrist and crying quietly. Darla took an unsteady step toward her, murder in her eyes and the set of her shoulders.

  I gave up on trying to stop her physically and instead reached out to find another kind of weapon. The roar of a bear ripped across the clearing. I looked up to see the hazy outline of my spirit bear leap to the top of the altar behind Darla, its misty form solidifying as it prepared to strike and bring her down. It raised its paw, and with one wide swipe, Darla was knocked to the ground.

  More death dealers rushed into the clearing, coming to help their comrades; the camp must have finally heard the fighting and come to investigate. I used every ounce of strength I’d left to call on the rest of my spirit pack. All around us, wolf howls filled the air, and the screams of death dealers followed. For a moment, the death dealers tried to stand, but my spirit pack ripped through the banshees that they raised to defend themselves. The mob broke up, fleeing with spirit creatures on their heels.

  The world spun, and I fell onto my back. I wiped a hand across my face, only then noticing the blood flowing from my slashed wrist as it dripped across my cheek. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply.

  Something brushed against my face and I opened my eyes. It was Dean. His head was close to mine. “Thank Goddess you’re alive,” he said. My body was hoisted into the air.

  Luke’s voice shouted, “Hurry, they’re coming. Run!”

  Those were the last words I heard as my eyes closed and my mind slid away into darkness.

  Chapter 5

  When I came to, I was lying in a bed. A colorful handmade quilt covered me. Light shone through a crack in a set of dark-blue drapes. The back of my head throbbed. I looked around the room.

  There were knickknacks everywhere—little figurines of cats and dogs covered most of the flat surfaces. The cabins in the camp were sparsely decorated. Wherever I was, I was no longer in the death dealers' camp.

  The door opened, and I froze. I let out of sigh of relief when I recognized Dean coming through the doorway.

  He gave me a wide grin. “Sleeping Beauty has finally woken.”

  I pushed the covers off and moved to get out of bed, but stopped as I realized I was wearing nothing but a red, oversize flannel shirt that reached down to my knees and a pair of white socks. Both my wrists were wrapped in white gauze.

  Dean rushed forward. “Not so fast. You took a good bump on the head and lost a lot of blood from the cuts on your wrists. How are you feeling?”

  I reached up and gingerly touched the large lump protruding from the back of my head. “I’m tired and bruised, but very much alive. No thanks to Darla.”

  Gone was the grin. “She could’ve killed you,” Dean said.

  “That was her plan all along.” And I’d been dumb enough to fall into her trap.

  “And why she made such a point of keeping the rest of us busy and away from the ritual.” Dean sat down on the bed.

  “She was doing a spell that needed my blood. She was going to push that sword through me and Jamie.”

  His eyes filled with anger. “Darla wanted to kill you. And she almost got away with it.”

  “Why didn’t she?”

  He gave me a puzzled look.

  “Why didn’t she get away with it? She was saying the spell—the sword was at my throat. What stopped her?”

  A frown creased his forehead. “I wish I could say I came to your rescue, but it was Luke. I don’t know why he left the cabin, but thank Goddess he did.” Dean reached out and took my hand in his. “I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost you.”

  I gave his hand a small squeeze and then slowly pulled my fingers out of his grasp.

  He was watching me. Those blue eyes were so intense. He’d made it clear how he felt about me. But how did I feel about him? In those last moments when Darla had the sword to my throat and I thought I was about to die, my thoughts had been only of Luke.

  “I was on the other side of the camp when I heard all hell break loose. When I came into the clearing, you were on the ground,” he said.

  Dean had arrived when most of the fighting was over. If he’d come sooner, some of the magic that had been whizzing through the air might have hit him. If it had, he would’ve changed. Then we would have had more to deal with than just the death dealer’s banshees.

  I looked around the room. “Where are we?”

  “A farmhouse.”

  “A farmhouse? Whose? Where’s Luke? Jamie?” My chest tightened in fear as I waited for his answer. Did they make it out alive?

  “They’re here. They’re safe. A woman named Mrs. Olsen owns the property.”

  “I want to see Luke.”

  The frown was back on Dean’s face. “He’s not here.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “He’s out doing some type of magic to keep them from following our trail. He said it’s something like wiping away footsteps in the sand.”

  I reached up and touched the bump again. “How long was I out?”

  “Four days.”

  I’d been unconscious for four days? I looked down at the bandages wrapped around my wrists. They covered the cuts Darla had made when she’d spilled
my blood. I’d made it out with just a few cuts, some bruises, and a lump on my head. Had Jamie been as lucky? “Was Jamie hurt?”

  “She has some cuts like yours, but we bandaged them up.” I started to make a move to get up again. Dean put up his hand. “Colina, Jamie is fine. She’s sitting with Mrs. Olsen in the kitchen, watching her make biscuits. Mrs. Olsen took us in. We’re safe here.”

  “And now they’re hunting us, Darla and her people.” It wasn’t a question. “Darla knew what she was doing all along. She lured me to the ritual. She made sure Luke was out of the way. She planned the whole thing. She planned to sacrifice both of us.” Who would’ve thought Darla was capable of such a wicked act? But I knew to what lengths people would go to protect their own. When the ones you love are in danger, it’s easy to cross the lines of morality. I’d learned you could justify just about anything when you needed to.

  “Darla won’t let us go,” I continued. “She’ll keep hunting until she finds us.”

  Dean got up and walked over to the drapes, opening them to look out the window. “We traveled for two days before we got here. When we stumbled onto the farmhouse, Mrs. Olsen took one look at the bunch of us, took us in, and started feeding us. She’s been taking care of you.”

  “Does she know we’re death dealers?” I asked.

  “She didn’t ask, and we didn’t offer much information. All Mrs. Olsen seems to care about is that we need her help.”

  If only the rest of the world could be so compassionate, I thought.

  Darla would come. Luke was trying to cover our trail, but if we stayed here too long they would eventually catch up with us. We needed to keep moving. This time I pushed the covers away and swung my feet over the bed. The sudden movement made me dizzy. I fell back.

  Dean turned to me, his face filled with concern. “You need rest.”