Battle of the Hexes

by Lidiya Foxglove

  “No way,” Montague said. “The ghosts just warned you that people die there. I am not letting you go.”

  “I have a plan,” I said.

  “Great. More plans,” he said. “Because our last plan went so well.”

  “It did go pretty well,” I said. “We killed the demon, saved my mom, and—“

  “Yeah, I died, no big deal,” Harris said dryly.

  “I brought you back!”

  “You brought him back from the dead?” Polly asked. “I thought that was really hard magic! How did you do it, Charlotte? Did you have to give up something really important? Did you have to kill someone?”

  “Oh, no, no…” Polly probably shouldn’t have been invited after all. She was going to know too much. Daisy put a hand on her hip and cocked an eyebrow, reading my mind.

  “Don’t give me expressions you learned watching RuPaul’s Drag Race, Daisy. Uh, yeah, we’ve done a lot of crazy stuff. That’s just how warlock school goes, I guess. It’s a lot more exciting than witch school, from what I hear. They tried to send me to the Southern Ladies’ Finishing College of Magic and it looked very boring.”

  “Are you stalling now, or do you actually have a plan?” Harris asked.

  “I have a plan! I mean, I haven’t been studying necromancy for nothing, right? You all saw what just happened. Unless someone here just really hates the name Benjamin, this place is full of angry ghosts. We need to plan a massive ghost summons. But first we need eleven more brides for the faery queen, so that we have somewhere to go after the attack where the council can’t hurt us or our familiars.”

  “But how can you protect yourself until then?” Montague asked.

  “If Charlotte goes, I go,” Harris said. “And if I go, you should all go. She’s going to need us. She has a tendency to do stupid things without guidance.”

  “‘I owe her my life so I will follow her to the ends of the earth’,” I said. “There, fixed it.”

  “You know I’m definitely going where you go,” Alec said.

  “I think this is a terrible mistake, but let it never be said that I was a coward who abandoned my lady at a time of need,” Montague said.

  “And of course, I go where you go,” Firian said. “Even if I have to stay out of sight. A part of me will always be with you when you’re crying over pee-drenched Legos.”

  “Fine, I’ll go too,” Daisy said. “These other eleven witches are going to be the only girls I have to talk to in Faeryland so they better be good.”

  “You can talk to me, Daisy,” Polly said.

  “Yes. Of course. We will also talk,” Daisy said.

  “Great,” I said. “So…we just have to get the eleven faery brides quickly, but the women in the bad half of the Haven are probably really desperate, and unfortunately we’re just going to have to exploit that desperation to save their lives. All we need is eleven agreements, so if we can knock that out in one day, then we won’t be there for long.”

  “So how do we get them to send us to the bad half?” Alec said. “We’re going to have to do something—“

  At this moment, he trailed off as we heard footsteps charging down the hallway.

  “Drop your wands, shut your mouths, and put your hands up right now!” a guard barked. “We’ve had reports of suspicious adult male screaming in this room and we’re going to have to search all of you for signs of unauthorized spell usage!” A key turned the door lock and then the door was thrown open. No one had even dropped their wands or raised their hands yet, but as soon as I saw the clenched jaws and hard eyes of brutes with guns in one hand and wands in the other, I dropped my wand fast.

  I was about to find out whether our screaming ghosts had either made things really easy, or really hard.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Harris

  I kept looking at Montague. He had a better idea of this place than the rest of us, and I’d never seen him look this nervous, not even when we were heading off to fight a demon. He’d never told us that his roommate here was dragged out and killed. I thought it was becoming a vampire that made him seem more mature after that summer, but maybe that wasn’t the only factor.

  I was worried for him, less so for myself. In the end, I was still pure warlock and my parents’ son. They were going to treat me gently. My parents would never cut off funding or let my death go unpunished.

  “What are we doing with them?”

  “There are traces of necromancy in the room, buried under wards. The girl does the former and the Nicolescu boy is skilled at wards.”

  “So…”

  “Separate them.” We had all been dragged back through the halls. “Initiate step one.”

  They escorted us into separate rooms. No one fought the guards; we had come here on purpose, but Charlotte definitely looked scared. She didn’t say a word, though. She seemed like such a normal human sort of girl when I met her, but she had the steely blood of her witch ancestors.

  Then I lost sight of them. The scuffle of footsteps echoing in the hall was replaced with the silence of a small, dim chamber. It was lit by just a few candles so I couldn’t really see what I was in for.

  The man attending to me was huge, as burly as the men who worked for my family, but without any of their warmth. He wasn’t wearing the standard black uniform of the guards, but a robe, so he must be a higher rank warlock. “Mr. Nicolescu, please stand against the wall.” He stood at a tray of spell implements and pulled on some gloves.

  For the first time, I started to think maybe there was some mistake, that he didn’t know who I was. But it was impossible that he would call me by the Nicolescu name and not know.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked, as coolly as I could manage.

  “You have a choice,” he said. “You can summon your familiar, and he or she will take penance in your stead as you watch, or you will take your penance alone.”

  “You’re not going to hurt her.”

  “All right.”

  “Do my parents know about this?”

  “Your parents have authorized us to treat you. They are praying for your recovery. I hope you will be more grateful to them when you go home.” He picked up his wand and waved the tip. Bindings of golden light wrapped around my arms and dragged me against the wall, lifting my arms until I was prone there.

  “Now,” he said, “it is time to see the consequences of your actions.”

  He walked close to me. He was an older man, but like with most warlocks, it was hard to say how old. They tended to look like they were about fifty years old for a very long time. He appeared to be a warlock in his prime, old enough to be a master of the craft. All my studies could hardly compare to the years of experience older warlocks had, but a younger person could gain some advantage through will and craftiness. I wasn’t feeling very crafty at the moment, however.

  Outside of the shadows of this room, the older warlock could have been anyone. A professor, a friend of my parents. He had shoulder length brown hair, black, squarish glasses frames with light eyes behind them, and a long nose. His robes were perfectly pressed and tidy. The only unpleasant feature he had was the way his lips seemed a little too wrinkled or something.

  “Are you with the Order of the Blessed?” I asked.

  “Yes. I am an elder of the church,” he said.

  “Father Bogdan?”

  “That’s right. Your friend must have told you about me. The Order of the Blessed has been formed simply to give coherence to the mission of all warlocks and witches. Our only true purpose is to save the lands of Etherium from falling to the darkness. Or…neutrality. Wyrd is our enemy as much as Sinistral is; we just have not considered them a threat, as the faeries have preferred to wither away rather than fight for scraps, but as you should know, those are our only choices. Your ancestors knew it, Harrison. Our world is dying. I will treat you unpleasantly this afternoon, because these are unpleasant times.” He picked up a bottle and put his hand around my jaw. “Drink.”

  “
What is it?”

  “A hallucinogen.”

  “Why?”

  “For sight.” Or maybe he said ‘foresight’. I was tied to the wall, my limbs already aching. I drank, but I didn’t want to hallucinate. I was always in control of the situation.

  He started to unbutton my shirt, baring my skin. I twisted away as best I could.

  “I am just going to trace your history,” he said. He picked up a different bottle, unscrewing the cap. There was a brush inside the cap, dusted with gray powder, which he whisked over my skin as if uncovering fossils. He whispered spell words as he went, ancient ones. I didn’t understand a word but I’d heard that some witches spoke the Ethereal tongue.

  There is still so much I haven’t learned. So much I wanted to know. The doors to that ancient knowledge will shut to me forever as I turn away from my history.

  As he brushed the powder over my skin, marks appeared and then vanished, coaxed by his whispering. When he put the brush away, he picked up his wand instead and now he was back to the familiar languages of magic. He bid the wand to burn with holy fire and cleanse me.

  I knew there would be pain, and I couldn’t fight, because I could already feel the hallucinogenic started to work its way into me and steal my strength and will, while my vision began to swirl and dance gently.

  He pressed the tip of the wand into my breastbone and traced downward.

  I wanted to scream, but I refused to give him the satisfaction. I would not succumb. I would give everything in my power not to show fear.

  I felt a hand brush my neck.

  “Do you want to dance with death?” Montague whispered in my ear.

  I saw Charlotte across the room, looking small and vulnerable. She was alone, looking for a friend, and she didn’t see me.

  Monty? Charlotte?

  They’re not real.

  My skin was on fire but I didn’t see the warlock now. Reality had slipped away from me. The room seemed to meld into a shadowed, sinister forest.

  Monty wasn’t alone; I realized. His clan was here too. Rayner and Silvus, holding my wrists; Monty at my neck. Thom and Jie, waiting patiently for their turn. They all started biting me, drinking my blood, and I wanted to fight them off but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. My skin was on fire and I felt my life draining away, but I always had a little more to give. I, who had always been the person who could give a command and make it so, wielding my name more fiercely than any weapon, had lost all control to the vampires.

  No, to death itself.

  What did it feel like to die? Some part of me remembered the moment my tether to the world was broken.

  The vampires were the bringers of death and the offering of life, both at once. They drained me without killing me, giving my body a chance to rejuvenate, only to feed them again.

  I was weak and I didn’t want Charlotte to see me like this, but even as I tried to hide my vulnerabilities from her, I saw her surrounded by demons. Alec was one of them, but he was not quite our Alec. He seemed more possessive than tender as he took her arm in his hand. The vision was soundless as the demons swarmed Charlotte, tearing off her clothes. Four incubi were sharing her, and they seemed to be demons known to Alec, but not to me. They didn’t love Charlotte, and she was afraid of them. All they knew was need.

  I saw her mouth forming Alec’s name. Crying out. He shoved his cock into it, while the other demons spread her legs. Raping her. This was nothing like when I took command of her in the bedroom. I always knew how much she enjoyed it, her little smiles and sighs and wet heat telling me everything I needed to know. This was brutality.

  “No…” I felt myself saying. “No!”

  This isn’t real. A lump rose in my throat, another scream that wanted to get out. This isn’t real.

  The trace of burning pain in my skin was spreading down my arms and legs.

  “There is no safety in this world,” Thom said, grinning at me. “No order. Sinistral will do with all of you as we please.”

  I realized that my blood was running out, all over the leaves and grass of the forest floor, trickling out of the vampire’s mouths. They let it go to waste as I felt weaker and weaker.

  I was dying again…slowly, this time.

  “No,” Rayner said. “Not yet. Maybe not ever. You will yearn for death when we’re done with you, our little Hapsburg Prince…they used to say the blood of royals was too holy to taste, but we always knew that was bullshit. It’s the sweetest of all.”

  The vampires lifted me into the nearest tree and lashed my limbs to the branches, my palms bleeding like some mockery of a crucifix and Monty was there laughing. It’s definitely not real. Monty’s too religious.

  The pain was so real. The weakness. The humiliation of them all staring at me, their faces pale in the moon shadows.

  It’s not real.

  In the clearing, Charlotte was now giving birth to a demon, a squalling, hideous creature with sharp nails and teeth and she was screaming with pain, left to writhe alone as the incubi looked on, including Alec.

  It’s not real. None of this is real.

  The demons poured out of her now, a dozen of them, with black wings, and they turned on her and started to tear at her flesh with their teeth.

  “Stop! Make it stop! What do you want?”

  The words finally tore out of me.

  I felt cool palms grip my cheeks, slowly dissolving the vision and stirring me back to reality. The warlock studied my face. “Most men have tears streaming down their cheeks by now,” he said. “You are a cold one, Mr. Nicolescu. What did you see?”

  I was hyperventilating a little as I drank in the precious sight of the real world, reminding myself that my friends were here. They would never do the things they did in the dream, and that I knew.

  “You made that vision,” I said.

  “No. I simply drew out your fears,” he said. “You don’t know if you can trust a vampire or an incubus.”

  Was the vision real? I was haunted by the vampires tasting me, by my own brush with death. More than a brush, in fact. That was the part that made me doubt myself. But it didn’t fit. The one thing I absolutely knew my brain would never conjure was Montague mocking a Catholic symbol. He was pure Spanish St. Augustine in that way, taking religion far more seriously than my family, or than Alec with his old ways that were not as rigid.

  I bet he heard some things about Monty from when he was here before, I thought. He saw Monty’s tricked out car, they probably confiscated his iPhone, they knew he liked girls and was off partying in Mexico. So they assumed he wouldn’t care about that stuff and threw that in the vision.

  “You are lying,” I said calmly.

  “Why would you think that? You mean to tell me you never have dark thoughts? Is your mind so pure?”

  “Sure, I have dark thoughts. But I know my friends,” I said. “You gave me the wrong ones. You made an assumption. I’m sure you’re good at these head games by now. But Monty would never make a mockery of religion. Alec might be horny as hell but he’s also a better person than I probably deserve as a friend. He would never hurt Charlotte. I know these guys. You crafted these vision and put them in the spell to trick me.”

  His ugly lips pursed, sneering toward me, as he shoved his glasses up his nose to narrow his eyes at me.

  I knew I’d won. I’d seen past his trick and he didn’t like that, but he would go to sleep tonight cursing himself for getting caught by a mere boy.

  He slashed his wand through the air and burned lines of fire across my skin. I growled through the pain. Anything to keep from screaming. When his arm fell back to his side, a funny smile twisted my face.

  “So this is ‘order’, huh? This is what the Ethereals wanted.”

  “You can rot there, boy,” he said. “We’ll break you. Trust me on that.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Charlotte

  I mean, I knew this was going to be difficult.

  I knew.

  I guess I just didn’t
realize…

  The dim room had some serious Medieval torture vibes going on, and when the witch chained my wrists straight above my head and then stripped me down to a bra and skirt, I knew this was going to be bad.

  “Can we—can we talk first, maybe?” I tried. “What do you want? Aren’t you supposed to ask questions first and then torture me if I don’t answer them?”

  This witch looked like a crazy person already, like she was not interested in questions. Her hair was a wild dark mane streaked with silver, her eyes a lovely pale blue—she was actually rather beautiful for an older woman—but they didn’t quite make contact with mine. She picked up a switch off your classic wall-of-torture-thingies. This was going to ruin any chance of getting experimental with Harris later, wasn’t it?

  “Ohmigod ohmigod please—please wait!” I shrieked.

  Then again, I don’t actually want her to get me to talk, I thought. I have a diabolical plan of my own. I can’t let her know about it.

  “Oh god,” I whimpered.

  Charlotte, you fought a demon. This is nothing.

  But…this was actually somehow worse than fighting the demon. At least I could fight the demon. Right now I couldn’t do anything. I was just trapped in anticipation, with no idea of what she would do or how long she would do it for. It could reach the female equivalent of James-Bond-in-the-testicle-torture-chair and was anyone going to rescue me? I had a feeling my friends were busy with their own…stuff.

  She struck my bare stomach with the switch. Once, twice, three times. So fast that the pain didn’t hit until they were over.

  And then it was worse than anything I could imagine.

  “Is that all you got, bitch?” I said.

  No, I wish I had said that, or anything besides what I actually said, which was to sob out, “I want my daddy.”

  I hadn’t called my dad ‘daddy’ regularly since freshman year of high school when I realized that all the sophisticated girls had moved on to ‘dad’, but I was being tortured, okay, don’t judge.

  “Which one do you call ‘daddy’?” she asked.