Then he locked his arm over my torso, the knife right there – right in front of me. It was angled towards my throat, the light from the crackling fire playing along the tip.
“Did you think I would fall for that, lying witch? I’ve watched you, Chi – I know your games.”
I struggled, but I couldn’t put my heart into it, not with the blade several mere millimeters from my throat.
“I don’t… I don’t understand what’s happening.”
“Oh, don’t you, little Chi? You were having a vision, following in Mary’s footsteps. But you pushed through. Because you’ve got a lot more drive than the rest of them, don’t you?”
My sweaty hair was plastered over my eyes, and I felt him lean in until his cheek was flat against my own. He blew at my fringe until it was brushed from my eyes.
A thrill of pure terror shot through me. “Ha… this… this is just a vision. It’s just a vision. I can break through. I can break through.” I squeezed my eyes as tightly shut as I could.
He chuckled, his chest shoving hard into my back with rhythmic pulses. “No, I’m afraid it’s more. You’ve got different abilities from the rest of them. From your grandmother, from Mary, even. From all of them. You’re the one I’ve been waiting for for all these hundreds of years.”
“You’re in the past. This is the past,” I repeated to myself, words a hasty, breathy prayer.
He laughed again, chest pressing so hard into my back, he practically crumpled me in half. “Past? No, my little lying witch – this is a different place. When you broke through the vision, you split time. Gave me another doorway, another glimpse of what’s to come.”
“I don’t believe you – this is a vision.”
“Oh, if only it were. But you’ve broken through, and you can’t go back.”
Though horror still pulsed through my veins, a tide of anger rose up to meet it. I wouldn’t lose to this asshole without a fight.
Maybe he could sense a change in my mood, because he chuckled right in my ear. “Ah, there it is – the fire I’ve seen through his eyes. The witch who won’t back down. But it won’t matter. For soon that power will be all mine.”
I suddenly shuddered. I cut my gaze to the side, trying to stare at his face, but I could only see the side of his nose. “M-Max? You’re the shadow, aren’t you?”
“Ha,” another laugh blasted against my cheek, “so you figured that out, did you? It took your grandmother years. And look at you, Chi, you managed it in a few months. Such a clever girl.”
“Go to hell, asshole.”
“Why? I don’t have to go anywhere I don’t want to, not now I’ve got you. Finally, my own seer. The future will be mine.” His grip around my middle tightened, the knife pressing higher towards my throat.
I had to push my head all the way back until I practically nuzzled Max’s neck, the rough cut of his stubble scratching my cheek.
“There’s no way I’ll help you, you bastard. I know what you’re doing – I’ve already figured it out. And I will never use my powers again. I’ll stop you from turning me into a mindless drone. You hear that? There’s nothing you can do to force my hand. I’ll never see the future again.”
“How about threatening your friends, your family, your city, your world? What will you do then, Chi? Will you turn from your powers and condemn everyone just to save yourself? That’s what she did—” Max shoved a shoulder forward, indicating the door. “That lying witch.” His tone changed, lost the control, lost the sense of victorious play. Instead, it was as bitter as lemon juice in vinegar.
“I’ll do anything to stop you. Anything.”
I felt him sneer. I was close enough to his face that I knew exactly what the sudden contraction of his facial muscles signified. “I’ll put you to the test with that,” he promised.
“No, you won’t. I’ll stop you, asshole. I’ll find some way to strip you from Max. I’ll stop you from using him to affect the future. I’ll trap you in this past.”
He stiffened again. Then he let out a belly-shaking, mirthless laugh. “Save Max? You don’t even know what he is. He’s just a shadow, just a smear of my true self.”
“No,” I spat, “you’re wrong – you’re the shadow.”
His laugh was deeper than before, shaking with far more satisfaction. “No, little Chi – that scrap of a spark you call Max,” his brogue became so deep it shook my hair, “is something that misguided witch, Mary, saved.” He hissed the word saved.
“W-what are you talking about?”
“She thought my magic was corrupting me – turning my soul. So just before she died at her own hand, she used the last of her ability to split me up, to save the last good scrap of my soul, as she put it. That’s your Max. And so you see, he’s nothing more than my shadow – nothing more than an insignificant scrap of the whole.”
I fought to process what he’d just said. Max… Max was a fragment of McCane’s soul? The only part worth saving…?
Suddenly tears welled in my eyes. I tried to fight them, but they dropped against McCane’s wrist.
“It’s too late to cry for your sins, little Chi – your future is sealed. For you will seal it yourself.”
“Max is dead,” I said hollowly. “The Lonely King killed him.”
Max snorted. “You think I would let that happen? Though I can’t control Max completely – and only ever when I can access the curse in full – I would know if my doorway into the future had died. You see, Mary didn’t realize that. Thought she was getting back at me by sending a scrap of my soul into the future. But she forgot we’d be connected. Forgot it would give me a chance to finally get the seer I’ve always wanted.”
I shivered. But a part of me shuddered back in relief, too. “Wh-where’s Max?”
“Trapped by the one you call the Lonely King. But not forever. For Max, my shadow, will always venture to keep you safe, even if he does not know why. And he will always find the power to do so, for I will give it to him. I have waited centuries for you, Chi McLane. And it will be centuries more before I give you up.”
I swallowed.
I had to get out of here, find Max – the real Max – and save him.
Perhaps McCane somehow knew what I was thinking, because I heard his gruff laugh rumble through the room. “You can’t escape me now. Oh no, not ever again. I’ll keep you here, Chi, until you use those abilities of yours to find a way to open me a gate into the future. Into our future. For you will be forever by my side.”
Though all my heart wanted to do was break from the fear, I held on. I frigging held on.
No. There had to be a way to get out of here.
This was my vision. There had to be a way to end it and return to the future, even if that would be returning to the peril of the Lonely King.
I squeezed my eyes closed and concentrated.
Max merely tightened his grip around my middle, finally dropping the knife. I heard it clang against the stone floor, felt the tip brush against my shoe.
I had to break out of here.
But how?
How….
The same way I’d broken free of Mary’s body.
I began to pull in on myself.
But it wasn’t in time. “Time for you to use your abilities, Chi. I’m hungry for my future.” Max jerked one of his arms up and flattened his palm against my forehead.
Instantly, I felt the heat, the sheer, incalculable force. It was burrowing a hole through my head, trying to shove a path through my mind like an icebreaker churning up a glacier.
I fought. Fought. Fought.
And then the sparks came. They exploded through my mind’s eye, spilling into every crack of my mind.
The second I followed them, would be the second I fell into Max’s trap. I knew that. I knew that. But it was… was impossible to fight.
They were everywhere.
No. Fucking hold on. I begged myself.
I was Max’s only hope.
I tore my attention off those sp
arks and settled it back on my body. When I’d broken free of Mary, I’d done so by pushing against her sensations, almost like they’d been a brick wall. Now, stone by stone, I put that wall back up.
Max shoved his palm harder against my forehead. I heard him give a hiss.
And I ignored it. Instead, I anchored myself back in the future, back in my grandmother’s house, back with the witches, back with Max.
With Max.
I held onto the memory of him as if he were a buoy in a violent sea. And that was all it took.
I felt McCane slip away from me. Felt his grip around my middle flicker and disappear.
The last thing I heard was him scream – a vicious shout that seemed to echo through time itself.
….
I emerged from the vision. It wasn’t quick, wasn’t slow. It felt as if time momentarily slipped away from me, became an irrelevant side note as I struggled to pull myself from the past.
I felt like a drowning woman using the last of her energy to push towards the single mote of light above that signified the surface of the water.
I pushed. I pushed.
And broke free.
With an echoing gasp, my eyes punched open.
There, right in front of me, I saw the Lonely King’s shoes. And there, right in front of me, I saw the sacred knife. It glowed in anticipation of blood.
The rain pounded down on the roof above, hissing as it spilled through the hole in the roof and dashed against the charged magic of the time gate.
The look in the Lonely King’s eyes was… incompatible with humanity. It was something else, something so warped, no one would be able to tell this bastard had once been a human with a human heart.
He reached down, wrapped a hand around my collar, and pulled me to my feet.
I stared into his eyes, and I swore I saw McCane. The same flicker of rage I’d seen pulsing in his eyes when Mary had questioned his pursuit of power.
… Could this be the true cost of a sorcerer king? In attaining the heights of magical power, did they sacrifice their own sanity and lose everything they’d ever held dear? My body was still weakened, immeasurably so. And yet, I found the strength to open my lips. As I stared up into the Lonely King’s eyes, I whispered, “You won’t be able to bring her back. This is the cost of your magic. It always has been. You want power? Then you’ll lose everything that matters to you.”
I wasn’t lying. I wasn’t trying to fake my way into victory. Not this time. And yet, nor was I relinquishing to my powers and seeing the future.
No, this was just a prediction. One from the heart. For I now understood.
Maybe it was how soft my words were, maybe it was the particular look in my eyes, but the Lonely King bucked back. He did not, however, let go of my collar. He just pulled me with him, the tips of my shoes trailing across the water soaked floor.
The ring crackled behind us, energized by our approach.
“It’ll work,” he hissed between bared teeth. “It has no option but to. I have studied too long, amassed too much magic for it to fail.”
“All you’ve done is waste your life,” I said weakly. “The more you seek magic’s power, the more it takes that power from you. That equation can never change. You’re just feeding your own demise.”
Rage split the Lonely King’s face, cracking his lips up until I swore they’d tear from his face.
He shoved the knife forward. But it did not plunge all the way through my chest. Instead, it stopped, the tip a mere millimeter in my flesh. Enough to draw blood. Enough to send pain spiraling through my body. But not enough to kill me.
Yet.
That would come in approximately—
“Ten seconds,” the Lonely King breathed as he stared at the watch on his wrist. He cut his gaze back to me, and I could see how red-rimmed and wild his eyes had become.
The fireflies suddenly swarmed in my vision, begging me to call on them.
9 seconds….
I wouldn’t call on them.
8 seconds….
I wouldn’t fall into McCane’s trap.
7 seconds….
The Lonely King repositioned the knife until the tip was pressed into the skin just above the center of my heart.
6 seconds….
No matter what happened, I would not let that bastard McCane use me.
5….
No matter what happened.
4….
The Lonely King’s expression changed, hope flickering in his gaze. But it was a treacherous hope. A broken wish that would never be fulfilled.
3 seconds….
I gritted my teeth against the pain I knew would come.
2 seconds….
It was… over. This was it.
1 second.
The Lonely King plunged the knife in. But it did not reach my heart.
At the last moment, a scream split the air, and something sailed into the Lonely King, knocking him and his knife away from my chest.
I staggered back just in time to see Max spring from the open door, a ball of magic lancing from his hand and slamming into the Lonely King once more.
Max. Max!
I staggered back, blood slipping down from the flesh-wound in my chest.
The Lonely King pounced to his feet, the sacred knife still in his hand. It was dripping with blood – my blood. The knife was glowing, sparking, the hilt alight with powerful flame.
With a hiss of horror and pent up rage, the Lonely King bolted towards me.
His time was running out.
He had to kill me within the next minute, or his spell would be broken.
I jerked backward, the move so violent, I fell to my knees.
I didn’t stay down. Nor did I run. Instead, I pivoted on my hip and kicked at the Lonely King.
I managed to get his ankle as he sailed towards me. It was enough to knock him off guard, to send him slipping to the side. But he changed direction at the last moment and threw himself at me. He landed on me, knocking the wind out of my lungs. The shock was almost enough to numb me, almost enough to stop my hands. But I yanked them up just in time, catching his as he tried to bring the blade down and shove it through my chest.
I managed to hold him for a split second. But I couldn’t hold him forever.
The knife inched down towards my chest, slipping into the same wound he’d created moments before, more blood spilling out and staining my torn shirt.
Before the Lonely King could overcome my measly strength and plunge the knife through my chest, Max screamed. He reached us, skidded down to his knees, and wrapped his arms around the Lonely King’s torso, trying to pull him back.
The knife was pulled from my torso, but even Max couldn’t cut all the way through the Lonely King’s considerable strength and pull him off me completely.
A battle ensued. For my life.
I kept my sweaty, blood-soaked hands wrapped around the Lonely King’s fingers as I struggled against his considerable strength. Max grunted, his boots skidding over the wet pavement, his shoulder muscles bulging. Magic gushed off him, but it couldn’t stifle the magic spilling off the Lonely King.
The rain kept pouring down, pounding into the roof, spilling through the holes, dashing against us as we struggled. It drove into Max’s magic, making it hiss and spit.
The seconds kept ticking down, and as they did, the time gate grew brighter. The pounding hum that shook through the room grew more violent, too. It pounded through the floor, vibrating into my water-and-blood-soaked back.
I didn’t know how much time I had left. I had no idea what would happen if the seconds ran out and the Lonely King failed to slice through my heart. All that mattered were my hands around his, Max’s arm locked around his neck – all that mattered was holding the Lonely King back.
As the seconds ticked by, the Lonely King’s eyes pulsed wide, the whites as bright as diamonds as his pupils hardened to a point. More and more magic arced off him until it looked as if he were consumed by a yel
low halo. I’d never seen a stronger magical display. The force was shaking through his body, making his teeth chatter like glasses hitting together.
Suddenly, with a scream shaking from his throat, the Lonely King shoved forward with all his force, with all his magic.
And I faced a choice. For right there – right in front of my eyes – were the sparks. I had time to reach out to them, to accept them.
But I didn’t.
Because screw this – I would make my own destiny.
I held on. With nothing more than my mortal strength.
Just hold on.
The Lonely King was using so much magic, he looked like a star ready to burn out. And he would.
5 more seconds.
I found strength from somewhere, held his hands in place. But I couldn’t stop the knife from dipping down, from scraping my bloody torso.
Max had been thrown back, and he was only now getting to his feet. He wouldn’t have time to reach me.
If I wanted to live, I’d have to save myself.
2 more seconds.
Last chance. The sparks swarmed me, flooded my vision from every angle. But I did not follow them.
I held on.
1 more second. Then nothing.
Time ran out. I lost my grip.
The Lonely King lurched forward, the knife pushing into my torso, slicing through another millimeter of skin.
….
But the knife went no further. For time had run out.
I watched the Lonely King’s eyes roll back, watched fear flood through his expression.
Max finally pushed up and reached the Lonely King, locking an arm around the sorcerer king’s throat and pulling him backward.
The Lonely King didn’t fight. He couldn’t. He’d burnt himself dry. Literally. His skin was smoking as if he’d rolled in coals.
Shaking, I pushed onto my elbows. Blood covered my torso, but it was already being washed away by the driving rain.
I locked a hand on my chest, my shaking fingers checking my wound.
It was superficial. It would heal.
The Lonely King would not.
Though Max grappled with him, dragging the bastard further away from me, it didn’t matter. The Lonely King didn’t fight back – he couldn’t. There was no fight left in him, barely any life left in him. He fell limp in Max’s grip, his head lolling to the side.
A Lying Witch Book Three Page 13
