by Lisa Edmonds
While I finished loading the magazine, I told Malcolm what I’d sensed from John West at the art museum the night before.
He was justifiably troubled. “We knew he was strong, but from what you’re saying, West might not just be a member of the harnad. He might be its leader.”
“I’m starting to think that too. In that case, he could draw on the power of the other members to enhance his own blood magic.”
“Not someone you’d want to have to face.”
I snorted. “No kidding.”
*
I went back upstairs to make coffee and toast an english muffin, then returned to the basement to look through my blood magic books for any more references to the Kasten. Other than the one I’d shown Malcolm yesterday, I didn’t see any more mentions of the box, though a few of the books described other objects of power with similar characteristics. I made some notes on those, hoping I’d learn something that might help me better understand what the Kasten was—if indeed that’s what had been in Betty’s library—and what it might be able to do. Malcolm worked on his masking spells in the work area.
Shortly before lunch, Natalie texted that she was looking through the last of the papers in the desk. We made plans for me to come over later in the afternoon to look at the letters she’d found from John West, once she’d had a chance to look through the rest of Betty’s files.
By two o’clock, I was bleary-eyed and my back was killing me. I leaned back in my chair for a few minutes and watched Malcolm jump in and out of his bolt-hole crystals.
I was reaching for another book when it felt like something kicked me in the head and I fell over. My chin hit the table and I bit my tongue. I ended up on the floor, staring up dazedly and tasting blood.
As the ringing in my ears faded, I could hear Malcolm calling my name. “What the hell was that?” he demanded. “I felt a surge of magic, and then you fell out of your chair.”
I tried to think, but my brain was fuzzy. “I don’t know. It almost felt like my house wards broke, but they’re fine.” I frowned. “Did someone try to get past my wards?”
“That wouldn’t have affected me,” he pointed out. “The only wards I’ve been working on—”
“—Are at Natalie’s house,” I finished. “Did someone just break Natalie’s house wards?” I struggled to my feet, reaching for my phone. My call to Natalie went straight to voice mail. I didn’t bother to leave a message.
“We’ve got to get to Natalie’s house,” I said. “Right the hell now. Can you jump there?”
Malcolm shook his head. “No, but I can get there a lot faster than you. Meet you there.” He vanished.
I took thirty seconds to cram my blood magic books back into the cabinet. Then I grabbed my phone, my bag, and my gun on the way out the door.
Chapter 24
I might not be able to move as fast as a ghost, but I could haul ass in my car. I got to Natalie’s house in less than fifteen minutes.
Even from the street, I could tell her house wards were broken. It felt like something was scraping against my brain, and the feeling got worse the closer I got to the house. By the time I reached the porch, I was staggering. The wards hadn’t just been broken; they’d been ripped apart with brute force.
I managed to get to the house and place my palm against the doorframe. I brought down the broken wards, and the disorientation and pain vanished. I straightened up shakily and tried the front door. It was unlocked.
Inside, it didn’t look like anything was out of place. Whatever happened, it happened quickly. “Malcolm?”
Malcolm appeared next to me. He flitted back and forth so rapidly, it hurt my eyes. “She’s gone. There’s blood in Betty’s room.”
“Shit.” Just outside the library door, there was a large smear of blood on the floor. I wondered if Natalie was trying to get to the safety of the library, where the wards would have protected her, but someone got her just before she crossed the threshold.
“Whatever happened here, we missed it.” Malcolm flitted so fast I could barely see him. “Someone took her.”
“Can you sense her?”
Malcolm stopped, closed his eyes, and concentrated. He vanished for a moment, then reappeared, then vanished again, then came back.
“I can’t,” he said finally. “Something is blocking me. She must be spelled or inside a ward. Whatever it is, it’s got to be strong.”
I cursed. The library wards ran over my skin like an electric current. Whoever had come into Natalie’s home, they hadn’t broken them. I wondered if that was because there was nothing in the library they needed anymore, if the wards had proven too strong for them to break, or if they figured someone would feel the house wards break and come to investigate.
I put my hands on my hips. “Natalie said she had the letters from West on the dining table, but they weren’t there. I’m guessing they were taken too.”
Malcolm moved next to me. “Can you track her with blood magic?”
I glanced at the blood on the floor. “Maybe. The longer the blood sits there, the harder it gets. If she’s protected by a masking or protection spell or ward, it gets even harder. I’ll need some of the things from my basement. I’ll get what I need to do the spells and be back as soon as I can.”
“I’ll stay here in case whoever took her comes back.”
“Be careful.” I shut the front door of Natalie’s house and hurried to my car.
My thoughts raced as I drove back to my house. Why take Natalie now? Malcolm and I had used his spell detector on Natalie’s aunts and uncle, but I didn’t see how any of them could have been aware we’d done that since Malcolm was invisible. Even if they had, none of them were the mystery mage. I was pretty sure John West hadn’t noticed us tailing him last night.
I almost hit a parked car when a sudden realization struck me.
Son of a bitch. The lawyer.
I’d asked Natalie to call Betty’s lawyer and find out if her grandmother had any other children besides the ones we knew about. Hours after leaving another message for him, Natalie was gone. Was there a connection? If the mystery mage wasn’t one of the siblings Malcolm and I had checked out, then there had to be another family member. It made sense. Maybe Natalie’s calls to the lawyer had spooked someone, and they’d come to shut her up.
I didn’t know the lawyer’s name, but I’d bet it was in the paperwork on Betty’s desk. I’d find it when I got back to Natalie’s house, and if my blood magic wasn’t able to locate Natalie, Malcolm and I would pay him a visit. If he knew who had Natalie, he’d tell me.
When I parked in my driveway, I left everything but my keys in the car so my hands would be free to carry what I needed for the blood magic ritual.
I was so focused on getting in and out of the house as quickly as possible that it took me way too long to realize Peter Eppright was standing five feet away in the shadows under my carport, and that he was pointing a gun at me.
I stared at him for a full second before reacting. I lashed his right hand with my cold-fire whip. He yelled in pain and dropped his gun, bending over to cradle his hand. I reached into my car to grab my gun off the passenger seat just as I heard a footstep crunch in the gravel behind me.
Something smashed into the back of my head, and everything went black.
*
The digital clock on my nightstand read 3:35 a.m. I sat cross-legged on the floor inside a circle. In front of me were three large jars filled with my blood and a spell crystal into which I was draining almost every last drop of my magic. Anyone monitoring me—which they certainly were, as I was under surveillance almost every minute of every day—would see me working ritual blood magic for my grandfather. They would not be able to see the jars or the spell crystal. I’d spent many hours crafting the circle. It was a powerful obfuscation spell, one of the most difficult I had ever attempted.
Tonight was the culmination of almost a year of planning and preparing, waiting for the right time, for the right type of contr
act. When my grandfather was hired by a smaller cabal to wipe out their competitor, it was the perfect opportunity for me to put my escape plan into action. Of course, I couldn’t readily accept the assignment or that would have aroused suspicion, so I’d initially refused to obey my grandfather’s command. I hoped Moses wouldn’t suspect I’d relented too soon. I had to balance how much torture I could take with how much I would have to recover for my plan to work.
The attack would require an enormous amount of energy, which was what I had been waiting for. I had been instructed to perform the ritual tonight, when the targets would all be at a location that was less well-protected than their compound. Everything had been carefully planned. It was a shame it was about to go completely sideways.
I’d drained as much of my blood into the jars as I dared. It had to be an enormous amount, and full of magic, for this to work. When it was dispersed by the explosion, my grandfather would have to believe I had been killed. I’d been thinking about this for almost a year. Now, in the moment, I was very calm, almost detached. It was almost certainly mainly the blood loss, but the rest was cold resolve. Either I would be free, or I would be dead. There were no other alternatives. Knowing that made it easier.
I funneled all of my magic into the spell crystal until all I had left was a tiny amount of blood magic.
I opened the jars and poured their contents into the circle. The coppery scent turned my stomach. The smell of my blood was inexorably tied to torture by my grandfather, the recently deceased blood mage, and others. Tonight it would be the key to my escape—I hoped.
The blood ran across the floor in wide rivers. I left the jars where they were. There would be nothing left of them, or the room I was in.
I used a small knife to cut four runes into my forearm with quick precision. A blood-magic protection and obfuscation spell flared over my body, powered by the last of my blood magic. It had to hold or I was going to be dead in about five seconds.
I closed my eyes. Blood magic flared around me.
I don’t remember the actual blast. One second, I was standing in my room. I blinked, and I was outside.
I lay in the courtyard, surrounded by burning debris. An enormous fireball billowed from a giant hole in the side of the compound where my rooms used to be. My hearing was gone, but I saw red flashing lights and knew every alarm in the compound was going off. People in black uniforms were running everywhere, some toward the blaze, some toward my grandfather’s apartment, the library, and the storage areas.
No one saw me on the ground, staring dazedly at the ruined section of the compound where I’d been kept prisoner for most of my life. The obfuscation spell was holding for now, but only fumes of my magic remained to keep it going. Once it failed, I’d be visible. I had another spell in my pocket, but it was an emergency backup and I couldn’t use it until I was well outside the compound walls.
I sat up and pain took my breath away. The protection spell had saved my life, but my left arm was broken at the elbow. I staggered to my feet, holding my arm against my body, and focused as well as I could to avoid bumping into anyone as I made my way through the chaos and smoke to the main gate.
Behind me, there was a second explosion; apparently, the fire had reached something volatile. I smiled grimly. Maybe the whole damn compound would burn to the ground. It was probably too much to hope for. It wouldn’t destroy the cabal, but it would certainly cripple it for a while.
The guard at the gate was shouting into his radio as the heavy double doors beside the gate opened. More uniformed men and women came pouring in—they’d been outside the gates on patrol and had been called in to help. They wouldn’t open the main gate; if it was an attack, that would put the compound at risk, but the small personnel doors could be opened to let in reinforcements.
I waited for my chance. When the guards stopped coming through, I slipped out and began running. Every step jostled my broken arm, but I held it as steady as possible and moved as quickly as I could through the woods surrounding the compound. I had to put as much distance between myself and that place as I was able to before blood loss and exhaustion rendered me visible and vulnerable.
Somehow, I made it the three miles from the compound to the state highway before I could go no farther. My vision was graying, and I was reduced to crawling the last few hundred yards. I’d hoped to use one of the disguise spells in my pockets and get a ride from a passing motorist, but I couldn’t even stand up, much less wave anyone down.
I spotted a culvert under the highway. On my knees and one hand, my left arm held against my body, I crawled inside the drainpipe and crept back into the darkness, half burying myself under leaves. Luckily, it hadn’t rained lately, and the drainpipe was dry.
Despite the warm summer night, I was shivering from shock and pain. With fumbling fingers, I dug into my pocket and felt around for the healing spell I’d brought. It was the largest of the spell crystals in my pocket; the others were mainly disguise and masking spells, plus a suicide spell that would burn my body to ash. The latter was the only one in my pocket that was distinctly cube-shaped. I was careful not to grab it by mistake.
My fingers closed around the healing spell. I had to hope no one came near this area and sensed its use before the magic trace dissipated. I knew I was risking being caught, but I also knew there was a real chance I would die from shock and blood loss if I didn’t do something. I hadn’t come this far to die now. I’d already gone all-in. What was one more gamble?
I pulled the crystal from my pocket, stuck it inside my bra so it would stay against my skin even if I passed out, and invoked the spell.
Magic hit my chest like a sledgehammer, and I spun off into darkness. My last thought was of freedom.
Chapter 25
Awareness returned slowly, as if I had to surface from a great depth.
I’d gone through so many torture sessions in my life that it had become second nature to play possum upon first waking. Feigning unconsciousness had worked in my favor more than once. I held perfectly still, breathed slowly and evenly, and tried to figure out what the hell was going on.
The first sensations I had were disorientation and tremendous pain. The latter seemed to be coming from the back of my head. Had I fallen? I tried to remember, but everything was fuzzy. I dimly recalled going to Natalie’s house after someone broke her house wards. Blood on the floor in Betty’s room. Malcolm trying to find her using their connection and failing. Driving back to my house. Then…nothing. The pain in my head indicated I’d been attacked.
That hypothesis was supported by the fact I was tied up and gagged. I felt a surge of fear when I realized I was splayed out on a hard surface. My left wrist and ankles were tied with rope, but my right wrist was fastened with a spell cuff. I reached for my magic, but it was dampened completely. It took everything I had to breathe slowly through the terror. It felt like I was back at the cabal, held in restraints for torture.
I had been basically rendered helpless, and the fear began to give way to rage.
I heard movement to my right. “You can open your eyes now.”
The male voice was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. I didn’t react.
“Miss Worth, please. You’ve been awake for several minutes.”
I finally recognized the voice: Peter Eppright. What the hell?
I opened my eyes and blinked, waiting for what I was seeing to make sense.
It looked like I was in a half-finished office building. I saw scaffolding, clear plastic sheets, boxes of drop cloths, stacks of sheet rock, huge spools of cables, and tables covered with hand tools. There were lights on stands set up around us. The rest of the building was dark. It must be night.
I lay on top of a large wooden table in my bra and underwear. All of my weapons and jewelry were gone, even my belly-button piercing. I was miserably cold.
I glared at Eppright, who stood about four feet away near a smaller table covered with a black cloth. His right hand and wrist were wrapped in gau
ze. I got a sudden flash of him standing under my carport with a gun. I didn’t think I’d been shot, but how had I ended up here? Whatever was going on, he was clearly in on it.
I heard a sound from the darkness and turned my head to look. It was a mistake.
Nausea surged. Vomit filled my mouth and sinuses, and I couldn’t get any air. I made desperate noises and tried to breathe through my nose, but that caused me to aspirate vomit into my lungs.
Eppright started cursing. He untied my gag and left wrist, lifted my upper body, and turned me awkwardly onto my right side so I could vomit off the table onto the floor. As I was desperately trying to breathe, I noticed a leather cord tied around my left wrist with several spell crystals on it. I wondered what its purpose was. I saw a second table next to mine, but it was empty.
“What’s going on?”
It was a woman’s furious voice. If I hadn’t been trying not to choke to death on my own vomit, I would have looked to see who it was. My brain felt too big for my skull. Definitely a concussion. The fact I was having a hard time thinking clearly and had been unconscious for at least several hours were very bad signs.
“She started to choke,” Eppright told the woman, who stood behind him and out of my line of sight. “You said we needed her alive.”
I threw up again, then started coughing up bits of stuff that had gone into my lungs.
“You should have thought of that before you and that idiot bashed her skull in,” the woman said.
I decided I didn’t recognize her voice at all. Also, I’d like to know which “idiot” hit me on the head so I could return the favor. My eyeballs throbbed in time with my pulse.
“That was Ray.” Eppright looked a little green, hopefully due to my vomit.
“Clean that up,” she ordered. I wished she would move so I could see her. She sounded like she was in charge of whatever the hell was going on. My brain started to catch up. Was this the mystery mage? With the cuff on, I couldn’t sense her magic.
