As it crackled against my back, it sent me shooting through the room, heading towards the lift.
I tried to fight against the force of that hand with everything I had, but everything I had just wasn’t enough.
I screamed Max’s name as I reached the lifts.
Though I fought against the urge to reach a hand out and punch the button that would call the elevator, Max’s spell won out.
The crackling pressure pressing into the small of my back shifted around, looped over my arm with a familiar touch, yanked it up, and forced my shaking thumb against the elevator button.
“No, Max, please,” I begged.
There was no way I could fight against the spell, and as that realization struck me, so too did another.
Jim was only several meters away, obviously surprised by the sudden change in the fight.
If I couldn’t fight against this spell, if I couldn’t save Max, then at least I could save Jim. “Move,” I screamed at him, voice rattling, pitching so hard, it felt as if my throat would explode.
Though I still couldn’t control the hand that was shoving my thumb against the elevator button, I managed to control my other arm, and I frantically waved Jim towards me.
He didn’t need to be told twice.
He shoved hard on his foot, keeping one hand behind him, the wrist twisting around and around in a strong circle, a cloud of defensive magic arcing out in his wake.
Just as the elevators pinged open and that charge of magic on my back pushed me forward, Jim reached the elevator and thrust inside.
I squeezed my eyes shut as the doors closed behind me. Max….
But it wasn’t over. Not by a longshot.
Just before the doors could close completely, something shifted, moving in, squeezing itself between the crack in the closing doors like water through a gap in a dam.
The faceless assassin.
I jerked my eyes open, but there was nothing I could do as the faceless assassin shoved forward, collapsed a hand over my throat, and pinned me against the wall.
Jim bucked back in fright but then immediately went on the attack.
He spread his hands wide and sent a strong, charging, crackling burst of magic slamming into the faceless assassin, but it wasn’t enough.
Jim had obviously used up most of his magic. Sweat and blood plastered his brow, dribbled down his cheeks, and splashed over his wide, shaking eyes.
And yet, he didn’t give up. Rounding on the faceless assassin again, this time Jim settled for hand-to-hand combat.
He collapsed his hands into fists and slammed them into the assassin’s back, but nothing – nothing could shift the assassin’s god-awful grip. It only grew tighter and tighter – tighter and tighter – until stars exploded over my vision and a metallic taste welled in my mouth.
I started to black out, but just before the faceless assassin’s grip could become so tight it squeezed my throat into pulp, Max’s magic fought back. It had been waning seconds before, obviously thinking its job was done in getting me to the elevator, but now it surged. It pulsed through me, and though my mind was currently shutting down due to the pressure of the assassin’s grip, I still recognized that memorable grass-and-sunshine magic. For half a second, I was transported back there to that meadow. I could feel the dew-covered grass beneath me, hear someone calling my name….
A burst of power rippled through me, shot up my body, and plunged into the assassin’s hand. It crackled along his fingers as if they were dry wood in a forest fire.
The guy shrieked, letting out a gurgling, rattling, pitching cry like the last scream of a dead man. Then he bucked back, finally releasing his strangling grip.
I fell, body simply buckling from underneath me as my back slammed against the wall of the elevator and I slid down it.
Jim rounded on the assassin, planting a sharp, hard kick against the assassin’s side, and felling him like a tree.
But the faceless assassin was not down.
He crunched into a ball, drawing his hands hard against his chest and flattening his palms against the black fabric of his tunic.
A blood-red pulse of magic spread from his touch. He looked as if he’d just split a vein, except a vein filled with electricity. For as that blood-red cloud spread across his chest, it crackled and spat.
Jim tried to jerk back, but he simply didn’t have the time. That magic touched the side of his left leg, and he let out a bellowing shriek.
I watched his leg crumple as if somebody had sliced it with a sword.
He staggered backward, banging against the door of the elevator as blood began to pour down his leg from an unseen wound.
My mind spun as reality struck me like a fist to the face.
We were going to lose.
There was nothing we could do.
No, not nothing – a voice rose unbidden from my mind.
Call on the power.
It alone can save you.
It alone could save me….
I squeezed my eyes shut with the last of the energy I had and begged the fireflies to return.
And they returned. They swamped me, in fact.
And yet, they were not quick enough.
The assassin rounded on me, pushed to his feet, leaned down, pulled me up by the throat, and pinned me against the wall.
Stars exploded through my vision, chasing back the power of the fireflies.
I heard Jim try to move, heard him gasping, scrabbling as he fought to get to his feet. But there was nothing he could do. I started to black out.
And this time, there would be no fighting it.
I had just condemned everyone. I turned from my powers. Max was right – that would cost me everything.
Chapter 8
I didn’t wake. Not fully. I couldn’t. It felt like there was a blanket smothering me, like there was cotton wool crammed down my mouth, like I’d swallowed foam.
I tried to fight it, tried to clutch my face to pull that smothering sensation off, but nothing worked. I could not move.
And yet, slowly, as time passed, I began to differentiate sensations, to feel my way through the pain.
It didn’t take much longer to sense the warm plush carpet beneath me. My mind expected to feel moldered plastic and a cold concrete floor, but that’s not what I got.
Instead, as I fought with all my strength against the vale of pain holding me back, I realized I was in a warm room, sunshine spilling in from the window by my side.
Everything was hazy, foggy like my brain had been pumped full of smoke.
But the sunshine lulled me, gave me something to focus on, a point of reference against my constantly slipping attention.
I followed it, followed it until I finally managed to open my eyes, until finally I managed to resolve the scene before me.
I was right – I was lying face first on soft, plush carpet, and from the little I could see of it, it looked expensive.
Above me was a splendid large window that gave an open view of the blue skies beyond.
Which didn’t make sense. Didn’t make sense at all. When Max and I had gone to that library, it had been evening. Yet now the sun was streaming in, and it had all the glow and warmth of midday.
Midday.
A wave of fear slammed into me. It was powerful enough that it gave me enough control over my hands to clutch them into fists. My fingers and broken, blood-caked nails dragged through the plush carpet as I fought for purchase to push myself up.
“Don’t bother. Save your strength. There is no way out of this room, anyway.” Someone said from behind me.
At first, a thrill of fear shot through me at the unexpected voice, but then I appreciated the tone wasn’t one of anger, just submission.
I fought against my fatigue once more, now planting my hands into the carpet with all the force I could muster.
“Just save your strength,” the voice repeated, this time with a true edge of concern. “Please, you are our only hope to get out of here, seer
.”
I ignored the voice, marshaled the last of my strength, and finally pushed past the vale of pain and confusion.
I anchored my arms and rose onto my elbows.
My sight was still bleary, it still felt as if someone had sprayed glue into my eyes, but after a few blinks, I managed to stare around the room.
It was beautiful, comfortable, expensive. It was large with a richly patterned cream and red carpet and red and wood-paneled walls. There were bespoke, expensive antique pieces of furniture littered throughout the room, from colonial chests to Victorian chairs, to a sumptuous, detailed chaise longue. There was also a cage. A dirty, rusty cage that looked as if it had once housed barnyard animals. Inside the cage was the witch from the library – Jim.
He shot me a pained look as my arms shook and I almost felt on my face again.
He leaned forward, clutched his hands around the bars of the cage, and shot me another concerned look. “Please, just save your strength. You’re our only way out of here,” he added.
“Where… where are we?” I kept staring around the room, trying to pick out a door. That was the thing – while there were windows – there was no door.
“The Lonely King’s mansion,” Jim replied with a heavy, shaking breath. “He’s keeping us for his spell tonight.”
Though a wave of nausea shook through my stomach at that admission, I managed to draw up a shaking hand and clamp it across my mouth. “What spell?” I asked between my sweaty fingers.
“He’s going to use us as the final offerings for his time spell,” Jim replied.
It would have been seriously easy to give in to the sudden fear pitching through my stomach and to allow it to flatten me and send me back into the arms of unconsciousness. Instead, I clamped a shaking hand over my mouth as I stared at Jim. A second later, I realized he was in a cage while I wasn’t. “Why am I just lying here?”
“Because the Lonely King figures you’re no risk now,” Jim answered.
“Sorry?”
“He pumped you full of something called a blocking compound – it’ll prevent you from calling on your magic. I’m in the cage,” Jim brought his hands back and tapped the bars with resonant thumps, “because blocking compound is seriously expensive, and he doesn’t want to waste it on me. He rightly recognizes you’re the real threat.”
I swallowed. Then my attention returned to the room. “How do you know where we are?”
“Trust me, I’ve investigated the Lonely King for long enough to know this place. Plus, I saw the bastard a few minutes ago when he was administering the blocking compound.”
Another sick feeling descended through my gut. I would have clapped a hand over my mouth, but I honestly couldn’t spare the energy.
I returned my attention to surveying the room. Again I was struck by the fact there wasn’t a door. “How did the Lonely King get in? Did he climb through the window or something? What is this room, anyway?”
“It’s a prison,” Jim said grimly. “There is a door, but the Lonely King is the only one who can access it. I might be able to figure out how to open it, but I’d have to get a good look at it – and the Lonely King’s way too clever for that.”
I kept fighting against my fatigue, kept pushing myself to find more strength in my wasted limbs.
I felt as if I’d woken up from a month-long coma.
My body was unresponsive. It wasn’t just that it was weak – it was as if someone had set my muscles on fire.
“Why… why am I so weak?” I managed to ask.
“The blocking compound,” Jim answered. “He doesn’t want you using your powers to figure out how to get out of this room,” Jim said. “Not until tonight, anyway.
Another sinking feeling crashed through my gut at that. “What… what exactly is he going to do to us? You said we would be the last sacrifice. Why is he trying to cast a time spell, anyway? I mean, what the hell is a time spell?”
Jim listened to my barrage of questions, but it soon became clear he had no answers. He simply shrugged. “I’ve got no idea what he wants, but I imagine it’s more power. It’s always the same with sorcerer kings.”
“What’s a sorcerer king, anyway? And how can he have so much magic?” I gestured to the room around us. “Why doesn’t it cost him?”
Jim looked at me directly. “It does cost him. Big time. He just found a way to get past it, to make other people wear most of the cost,” Jim said through clenched teeth.
I grimaced as I realized what he was saying. “You mean hearts, don’t you? That’s why he collects the hearts of witches, right?”
Jim nodded. “There are other ways, too. It doesn’t just have to be hearts. If you’re smart, and all sorcerer kings are, you can fool other magicians into using their magic for you – manipulate them into contracts, threaten their families, that kind of thing.”
Nervous energy escaped down my back. It was the final impetus I required to push all the way up into a seated position. With ashen, pale cheeks, I faced Jim. “Sorry? What do you mean? A contract?”
Jim shrugged again. “It’s the easiest way for a sorcerer king to keep collecting his power. All he has to do is find a magician weaker than him, and then he can engage them in a magical contract. Take their power, control their abilities for his own ends. That way he can amass the kind of magic that can do this,” Jim gestured to the room around us, “without amassing consequences.”
I could hardly believe it.
…. I hadn’t really questioned the story Max had fed me – that my forebear Mary McLane had been a line witch who had cost Max’s village hundreds of lives. I’d just taken it at face value. Why else would the McLane seers have been cursed?
This was the reason we were cursed, because Max from the past wanted our power.
We descended into a sharp, itching kind of silence, one that settled my attention on how weak my body felt.
“How powerful are sorcerer kings, anyway?” I forced myself to ask, soon realizing I couldn’t whittle away the last hours of my life in complete silence. Though it now seemed likely I wouldn’t be able to free myself from the Lonely King’s grasp, I still wanted to figure out this mystery, even if it would be the last thing I would ever do.
“They are the most powerful practitioners in the magical world. But, like I said before, it’s not because of their own inherent magic. It’s how they control others.”
I gave a stuttering nod in reply. “How long does a sorcerer king live for? I mean, are they like the other magical races – can they live for hundreds, if not thousands of years?”
Jim shrugged. “It depends on how much power they can amass. If they’re strong enough – and some of the kings of old were plenty strong enough – then yeah. They can live practically forever.”
“How does a time spell work, anyway? What are its limitations? I mean, how is it not going to break the timeline?” I stumbled through my questions, hoping I made sense.
“I don’t really know. To be honest, temporal metaphysics isn’t my specialty. Tracking down assholes like the Lonely King is. But a fat lot of good that did me,” Jim muttered. Then he returned his full attention to me. “But none of this stuff matters. The only thing that matters is finding a way out of here. The Lonely King may have pumped you full of blocking compound, but I’ve heard how strong you are from the other members of the coven. If anyone can push past that compound, it’s you. And you have to. You have to see the future, figure a way out of this room, because if you don’t,” he didn’t finish his sentence, just trailed off as a sickly, pale look overcame his cheeks.
My world was literally tipping out from underneath me. I didn’t feel like I was on a flat floor anymore. It felt like I was in a broken rollercoaster, one that was pitching from side-to-side, threatening to throw me out at any moment.
“Seer, I know you’re new to this world – but you are our only hope. Push past the confusion and fear, push past the compound, and figure out a way out of this room. We are running out of ti
me.” Jim tipped his head back, angling it towards the windows.
It looked to be about noon, which meant we had approximately seven hours left. I gulped. Then something struck me – a memory that had been playing at the corners of my mind but one I hadn’t been able to remember until now. “Where’s Max?” I asked in a shaking voice as I realized I couldn’t even remember how I’d gotten here. I remembered going into the library with Max, remembered the compactors, then nothing. The next thing I’d known, I’d woken up here.
Jim’s cheeks became pale as he looked at me. “Max is the name of your bodyguard, right?” There was a slow, careful edge to Jim’s tone.
Warily, I nodded. I felt… a hole, like I was missing something….
“It makes sense that you lost a little of your memory considering how much blocking compound the Lonely King used on you,” Jim explained quietly.
Horror now pulsed through my heart as the memory I was fighting for started to form in my mind. “Where’s Max?” I asked, practically screaming at Jim.
“I imagine he never made it out of the library. He bought us some time, but it wasn’t enough. One of the Lonely King’s many faceless assassins came after us in the elevator. As for Max… the truth is, I don’t know. But no one could go up against a sorcerer king…” Jim trailed off.
Me? I started to sink. It honestly felt as if the floor had turned into quicksand and I was being sucked beneath it. My heart felt like it plunged from my chest, pushed through my torso, and melted into the center of the Earth.
No, Max couldn’t be… he couldn’t be dead. Not after all the effort I’d put into figuring out what he was, into trying to find some way to save him. He couldn’t leave me alone, not now. Not ever.
I was usually the kind of girl who kept my feelings close to my chest. There was a reason your heart was buried safely beneath your rib cage. As I’d already mentioned, smart people did not wear their heart on their sleeve. They controlled and measured their feelings. You never knew what life could throw at you. Why bother falling head over heels for some guy if he might turn out to be a prick, or move halfway across the country, or fall for somebody else?
A Lying Witch Book Three Page 8
