“Char-lieee,” he called with a voice which echoed around the room as if amplified. “Come face me. Leave your friends behind and maybe I’ll spare them. It’s you who has betrayed me.”
Rowan put a hand on my arm, but I shook my head. “If I fight him alone, it might give you a chance to get everyone out of here.”
“No,” he said, his face hard. The vampire characteristics had returned, making the Lawson costume barely recognizable. “I’m not letting you do this alone.” His grip on my arm tightened.
I put my hand on his cheek. “But, you’re out of magic.” I gave him one final, longing look, then did exactly what Fedorov did for me.
I jumped forward and cast a barrier spell.
The others had been so focused on Nyquist they hadn’t even noticed what I’d done, but Rowan knew. He surged forward, smashing into the invisible wall that separated me and Nyquist from my friends. The see-through wall thudded but held.
The look on Rowan’s face nearly ripped me in two, but I would not let him or the others die for me. Not today.
Rowan banged his fists on the barrier in desperation. “Charlie! Charlie! Take this down!”
Disha joined him, casting a spell against the barrier that had no effect. She didn’t have any gnomes to help her get through.
The pain of seeing them like that twisting me in knots, I turned around, realizing too late that someone else had taken a step forward before my wall had gone up.
Cruise glanced from me to Nyquist who seemed to be revaluating the situation. The guy who I’d once thought was a monster had left safety to join me in this battle.
“I saw what you were doing,” he said. “I didn’t want you to be alone.”
“Cruise, why?” It was too late to drop the barrier and create a new one. He was stuck with me.
I wanted to say more, but Nyquist’s booming voice took over. “Fine. The two of you will do. Cruise, you have betrayed me as well. You can share Charlie’s fate. Your father always said you were a disappointment. It’s sad to see he was right.”
His bruised face hardening, Cruise scowled. “My father is an ass. And so are you!”
Nyquist laughed mirthlessly, a sound that filled the empty space, making the ground tremble. “Your pluck won’t save you now, boy.”
Then he raised his hands and shot magic at us.
I tried to project Fedorov’s speed spell before it hit me, but I was too late. My body froze as time slowed to a standstill.
Only Nyquist could move. He floated forward, his sickly green light illuminating the shadowed spaces around us.
I needed the speed spell. I tried to speak slowly as I had last year, but Nyquist flicked his fingers and clamped my lips shut. I couldn’t move them at all.
Dammit.
When he was mere inches from my face, Nyquist stopped floating forward.
“Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. So much fuss about you. I kept wondering what was so special. But, then I realized...” He took my chin and angled it toward himself, his fingers pinching my skin. His touch disgusted me, but I focused more on trying to feel the magic as I had before. Yet, something seemed to be blocking it.
Nyquist’s glowing eyes narrowed. “I realized there was nothing special about you. Nothing but these cuffs.”
He yanked my arm out where it stayed frozen. I fought to draw it back, but the millimeters I managed to move it were useless as Nyquist brought his electrified hand down just above the cuff.
Heat and pain blazed into my skin as Nyquist’s fingers shot white fire. The smell of cooking flesh flooded the air as he attempted to cut my hand off at the wrist.
A scream stuck in my throat as the pain blotted out all thought. Terror blared inside my skull like a four-alarm fire. He was going to take my hand and there was nothing I could do about it. Behind me, my friends shouted and banged on the glass in desperation, but my barrier held.
In equal desperation, I tried to take the barrier down but nothing happened. My magic wasn’t working.
A figure appeared behind Nyquist, then bashed into him, knocking him to the ground. The burning stopped, but the pain remained. My eyes dropped slowly to my skin and found a charred line above my cuff. I longed to cast a healing spell to stop the pain and erase the gruesome sight, but I was still frozen.
But, somehow, Cruise wasn’t. He jumped up, shooting spells at Nyquist’s fallen figure, taking advantage of the surprise attack to unleash everything he had.
Buffeted by a barrage of spells Nyquist never saw coming, the dean fell and didn’t get up.
Suddenly, I could move again.
I fell to my knees as a garbled scream fell out of my mouth. With trembling fingers, I wove a healing spell and cast it on my burn, helping with the pain enough so that I could think straight. Then I turned to Cruise.
He stood over Nyquist’s shriveled shape, panting and sweating, his hands out, ready to deliver more magic if the battered old man moved a muscle.
Why wasn’t Cruise frozen? I’d been so focused on Nyquist, I hadn’t noticed Cruise. It seemed the old man had made the same mistake.
“How?” I gasped, trying to draw breath and stand on shaking legs.
Cruise reached into his shirt and pulled out a medallion similar to the one Rowan had worn before he’d been turned. “It’s my father’s. He bought it for a large sum of money after he witnessed Nyquist’s time-altering spell. It cancels the effects. He didn’t want Nyquist to be able to control him. Came in handy.”
“It sure did,” I said, letting a small grin climb onto my face. Who’d have thought Cruise would be the one to save us?
I stared at Nyquist’s incapacitated figure. This was my chance to end him and his tyranny forever. I had to do it. I had to kill him.
But now, staring down at him, all I saw was a fragile, old geezer with thin bones and parchment-paper skin. He was his normal shrunken-down, ancient self. I couldn’t kill him now, not like this. It would be like shooting a grandpa in the back. How could I live with myself if I did that?
Instead, I’d bind him as best I could, then we’d transport him out of here and try to find Lynssa McIntosh. She’d know what to do with him.
“Let’s get out of here before he wakes up,” I said, taking a deep breath and getting ready to drop the barrier spell. My friends stood on the other side, looking confused, relieved, and generally astonished by the turn of events.
But then their eyes widened.
Seeing the fear on their faces, I whirled in time to see Mystro Ponomarenko walking through the wall and into the room.
My blood went cold. The mentalist was here.
We had seen him evaporate Smudge Face in midair, imprison Tempest with the flick of a hand. He’d turned Drew into a weapon and had made Fedorov and Lynssa—two of the most advanced practitioners of magic ever to walk the earth—flee from him.
None of us stood a chance.
“Watch out,” I shouted at Cruise, as my instincts took over and I shot an attack spell at the advancing mentalist.
He deflected it with one bored hand, then erected a shield that stopped the next spells Cruise and I shot at him. Each incantation fizzled and fell away, as effective as water droplets.
He stopped in front of us and pushed back the hood of his cloak, revealing his face for the first time. I’d seen glimpses of it in the few times I’d come across him, but now every distinct detail was revealed. He had a long hawkish nose, oval face, and heavy eyebrows. The ancient, blue-swirling runes that stitched his cloak now also appeared on his fingers and again above his collar and back of his bald head. His eyes were all white, soulless and empty.
“Finish what you started,” he boomed. A tattooed finger pointed at Nyquist.
“What?” I asked, my addled brain spinning. I’d thought he’d blast us out of existence, but now he was asking us to… What? Kill Nyquist? They were partners.
To confirm my suspicions, he slowly nodded. “Finish him.”
Cruise and I glanced between the ev
il mentalist and Nyquist.
None of this made sense. If it was a double-cross, why didn’t Ponomarenko do it himself?
“Why?” I asked.
“Do it. Now.” He hovered off the floor, looking very similar to Nyquist with his billowing cloak and glowing magic snapping around him. Maybe Nyquist had patterned himself after Mystro, or vice versa. Either way, they were cut from the same cloth.
“If you want him dead so badly, do it yourself,” I challenged, charging my cuffs with defensive spells.
I glanced to Cruise to indicate he should step behind me. Ponomarenko followed my gaze. Before I could react, his hand shot out and gripped Cruise’s body in a web of green magic.
“Stop!” I said, rushing forward, but it was too late.
Cruise’s body crumpled like a wad of paper, then fell to the ground.
“No!” I screamed in shock and rage.
I turned on Ponomarenko, but his other hand shot out, pinning me.
Everything went fuzzy, like a TV show cutting to static. A buzz filled my head. My vision went gray. I couldn’t feel my body, no pain, no anger, no fear.
Then a thought repeated in my head.
Kill Nyquist. Finish him.
Yes, that was it. That was what I needed to do.
My vision returned and my limbs followed my commands. I strode over to the old man, my body pumping with rage. He would pay. He would pay for everything he’d taken from me.
When I kicked him, he flinched, eyes fluttering open. “Charlie?” he asked through dry, cracked lips.
I didn’t let him speak further. I charged my cuffs to full power. Then I blasted the old man with everything I had.
He didn’t have time to scream. His body convulsed, jittering along with the pulse of my magic. He began to vibrate apart, piece by piece disintegrating as his eyes locked on me.
Wide. Terrified.
It fueled my rage. I burned him as he’d burned me.
He crumbled to ash at my feet and I stood there immovable, feeling nothing but rage.
A figure stepped beside me. Ponomarenko.
He snapped his fingers and everything came flooding back—my pain, my confusion, my horror at realizing what I had done. What he made me do.
I’d killed an old man. I burned him into nothing.
Staring at the ashes, a sea of emotions flooded over me, nearly dragging me to my knees. I was a murderer. I’d done it in cold blood.
He made me do it. He made me.
But, I’d wanted it, hadn’t I? Wasn’t I somewhat responsible?
Mystro kicked at Nyquist’s ashes and laughed. They swirled in the air, the smell making me gag.
“You!” I said, turning my despair into rage. I charged my cuffs again.
Mystro snapped his fingers once more and I was frozen. I waited for the static feeling to blot out my thoughts, but, this time, they remained my own. He’d frozen my body but not my mind.
“Thank you, Charlie,” he said, stepping closer. “I’ve wanted that pathetic excuse for a man gone for a long time, but before giving me access to the Loopers, he made me swear a magical oath not to harm him. So I bided my time for a weapon that could do the job for me. Then I saw you.”
Unadulterated fury seethed in my chest. He had used me. I wanted to spit in Ponomarenko’s face, but I stood paralyzed as he circled like a vulture.
“And now that he is gone, there’s one more matter to attend to.”
He reached out his hand and shot magic at my wrist, right at the spot where Nyquist had burned me.
Unable to move, I choked on a scream as Mystro Ponomarenko cut off my hand.
Chapter Thirty-Two
FALL SEMESTER
LATE OCTOBER
My hand. He took my hand.
I stared at the cauterized stump unable to process what had just happened. Ponomarenko had cut off my hand.
It was gone. In one swipe. Just gone. It lay lifeless on the ground. I stared at it. Blood. It speckled the floor and collected in the grooves of my palm.
My hand. Oh, God, my hand.
It couldn’t be. Denial took hold of me.
This wasn’t real. I wasn’t maimed for life. It was all a trick of the mentalist. Except deep down inside I knew.
It was true.
The horror of it sank its claws into me.
I waited for the pain, but all I felt was a warm throbbing like my heart had moved into my forearm. My head was swimming. I was going to pass out.
Ponomarenko bent down and picked something off the ground. For a moment, I thought it would be my bloody, severed hand, but then he lifted up a metal cylinder instead.
I focused on it as I fought the shock that threatened to take me under.
He held my cuff up to and examined it. It looked foreign and utterly strange in his hand. It didn’t belong there.
Bloody and tarnished, it throbbed with light as if it, too, was beating in time with my heart. I waited for it to burn through him as it had with Georgia Copeland during Freshman Year, but it didn’t.
Why not?!
I willed the cuff to kill him, but nothing happened. Did that mean the cuffs were choosing him? No. They wouldn’t. Perhaps his powers were great enough to counteract the cuffs defense mechanism.
Either way, I couldn’t do anything to stop him. Not only was I frozen, but my mind was growing sluggish. Soon, I’d be unconscious, though I fought to stay awake with every ounce of my being.
He pocketed the cuff, staring me down. “This item never really was yours to begin with. Neither is this one.” He reached for my other hand.
No. Oh, no.
I wanted to fight, to run, but I could do nothing as he drew my other wrist into his hand and lifted his other hand. It crackled with fire magic.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I now prayed for unconsciousness. I couldn’t live in a world where both my hands were gone. What would become of me?
A crashing sound dragged me back from the brink of oblivion. When I was able to open my eyes, I saw figures pouring in. Blurs of motion and screams of anger and rage filled my senses.
The barrier had come down. My friends were attacking Ponomarenko.
A sliver of hope bloomed in my chest before the blackness consumed me.
I awoke to someone stroking my hand.
My hand!
Eyes fluttering open, I blinked into the daylight streaming in through a window. The sight was familiar, the Academy infirmary spread out before me. I was in bed, buried beneath clean linen.
A bandage spread from my right wrist up my arm. I wiggled my fingers. Nothing happened. Why not? My fingers were there. Weren’t they?
“Charlie, can you hear me?”
Turning my head, I found Disha at my bedside, squeezing my left hand. Desperately, I squeezed back. My fingers responded. At least this hand was intact. Ponomarenko hadn’t taken it.
“What happened?” I croaked, my throat dry and tight with the urge to cry.
Disha looked exhausted. Her usually styled hair was lank and her body appeared far too thin in her baggy sweatshirt. A bruise was yellowing on her cheek and a pink abrasion angled down her neck before disappearing into her shirt collar.
“We fought Ponomarenko,” she said. “We were, somehow, able to drive him back. Then we brought you here.” The way she said “somehow” made me wonder exactly what had happened. I didn’t ask. There was only one thing I wanted to know.
“The others?” I asked, thinking of Rowan, Bridget.
“Rowan is okay. He was weak after the fight. He didn’t have enough magic to keep his Lawson disguise going one-hundred percent, so he had to leave since the M.L.E. are still after him. He told me to tell you to heal up fast and that he’ll contact you as soon as he can.” She gave a thin smile.
“Do you know where he is?” I asked as a bigger void opened in my chest.
She shook her head. “He’ll be in touch soon.”
“Bridget? Anama? The rest?”
Disha bit her lip. “Bridg
et and Anama are fine.”
“Sinasre?” I asked. There was something she wasn’t telling me.
She nodded, but a small tear glistened at the corner of her eye.
“Cruise?”
Disha shook her head, wiping the tear away. “He brought down the barrier. Instead of using his last bit of magic to heal himself, he set us free to save you.” She gripped my hand. “He died a hero.”
The pain of this information barreled into me. Cruise was dead. He died saving me. Saving us all.
Hanging my head, I let tears slip down my cheeks and drip onto the pillow. Why did he have to die? Why couldn’t I have been strong enough to save him? This was all Mystro Ponomarenko’s fault.
“I killed Nyquist,” I whispered.
Disha nodded. “I know.”
“Ponomarenko made me do it, but part of me wanted to.”
The pain of that revelation slid alongside the pain of losing Cruise. Together, they multiplied the ache in my chest until I could barely breathe.
“No one blames you, Charlie,” a female voice said. I recognized the voice, but it couldn’t be who I thought it was. When I lifted my head, Dean McIntosh stood before me.
“How are you here?!” I asked, disbelieving my own eyes.
She sat on the bed, smoothing the sheets. Her hair was pulled back and her clothes were clean. She looked much better than the last time I’d seen her running from Mystro Ponomarenko.
I thought of all the anger I’d felt toward her for not telling me she had faked her death, but that seemed gone now, and all I could feel was relief to see that she was fine and back at the Academy.
“Charlie,” she said, her eyes wavering with sympathy and compassion. “You strong, strong girl.” She swallowed, then continued, though not without effort. “You did the world a great service. You confronted Nyquist when no one else would. You saved Kiana and Tempest. Thank you.”
My throat tightened as I fought more tears. Maybe I had done all of those things, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel pride or satisfaction—not when I had killed a man, not when my hand was gone.
Senior Witch, Fall Semester Page 22
