Candles burned in the windows of the farmhouse, inviting the Flame to ritual. Already Zerena could feel power sparking on the air, like the thrum of anticipation in the moments before a symphony begins a performance. All the instruments tuning, preparing themselves to be played. She was even more certain now that the ritual would succeed. The power in the air was too strong. There was no way they could fail, not on a night like this, blustery and cold, the stars glimmering in the gaps between the clouds.
Tonight she would finally prove to Terzian that she was still that girl in whom he had seen so much promise. That she was willing to take the necessary risks to see the Flame to victory.
Their attempts at creating new Hosts had failed before. But she wasn’t afraid. Tonight Terzian would see her courage, and he would choose her. The next time the Flame attempted to create a new Host, she would ensure their success. The other candidates had been unworthy—she was certain that was why the elementals had rejected them. But Terzian would see tonight that no elemental would be able to refuse her.
She pulled open the door to the farmhouse and slipped inside. A scent like dying flowers wafted through the air. All but one of the participants had arrived, and they had paired off, murmuring softly to each other. Terzian stood in the corner, speaking into the telephone. His cane leaned against his thigh. A clock ticked on the wall above the old collapsing fireplace, charms of flowers and metal twisted around it to ensure that it ran at the same second as other clocks spread across the globe.
In the center of the room, the symbols for the ritual had already been laid out on the floor in white chalk.
“You’re late.” Zerena stiffened. Sasha, sneaking up behind her. “And overdressed. This isn’t the opera, Zerena.”
Zerena turned on her heel, the skirt of her dress flaring around her. She slid the fur away from her shoulders—the cool air was like a kiss on her bare skin—and stared calmly at him.
“I can take that, if you’d like,” Sasha said, his words oily, tipped in venom. “We’ve set up a coat check in the bedroom.”
“I can take care of it myself.” Zerena breezed away, hoping that was enough of a rebuff to deter him. It wasn’t. He followed along, smiling to himself.
“I hope you aren’t feeling too much pressure,” he said, chattily, as if they were old friends and not old rivals, as if he didn’t actually want to see her succumb to that pressure and fail. “It’s an important night. Terzian has high expectations for the ritual’s success.”
“So do I.” Zerena shoved open the door that led into the only other room in the farmhouse. Coats hung from the mismatched racks someone had brought here years ago. Zerena laid her stole over one and turned to walk back out into the main room—but Sasha stepped into her path, grinned up at her.
“I, for one,” Sasha said, “must disagree with you and Terzian on that matter.”
Zerena said nothing, although she felt anger warming the space inside her ribs like a furnace.
“But you were always so fond of far-fetched schemes,” Sasha sneered, “that your position this time doesn’t come as much of a surprise.”
Zerena knew better than to let him see her rage. “Oh, Sashenka, no one knows as much about complicated plans as you, so perhaps I should take your opinion into consideration.”
His eyes narrowed. Zerena smiled.
“After all, I believe many of us voiced opposition to bringing that American CIA officer over to secure the defector Host.” She tsked softly, and Sasha scowled at her. “I, for one, had never seen a plan as complicated as that—”
“Stop. Both of you.”
Zerena froze. Terzian’s voice cut straight through her chest. She turned to look at him over her shoulder. He had always been a thin man, but seemed larger, less gangly, in the face of a ritual. An effect of his magical power.
“I would remind you,” he said, “that a ritual such as this is contingent on collaboration.” His eyes flicked between Zerena and Sasha. “Amongst all parties involved.”
“Of course, sir.” Zerena gazed at him through her long eyelashes. When the ritual worked, Sasha would be left behind in the shadows.
“It’s time,” her mentor said, and whirled away from them. Zerena glanced over at Sasha one last time. He was frowning, his beady little eyes burning.
She took her place in the circle, ready to work her magic.
• • •
The hitchhiker thumped in Gabe’s head, a gently rhythmic pounding that would have incapacitated him just a few months ago. Had incapacitated him, in fact—he still heard grumbles of complaint about his bungles with Drahomir from Frank.
“Something’s up,” Gabe said. “Something with the—” He stamped his foot against the tobacconist’s roof. “The ley lines.”
“Yes.” Tanya pulled a flat disk from her pocket. “I feel them, too. It’s like the night of the house fire.”
She looked up at Gabe and he considered the ramifications of this soft magical pounding in his head. “Someone’s using them,” he finally said. “That’s what you think.”
“That’s what I know. Hopefully this will tell us more.” She lifted the disk. It was silver, or at least silver-colored, and wrapped with twists of dried herbs. “Are you sure this is the place you saw the target?”
Gabe glanced across the street, at the ornate building where Terzian had slipped away. It had been dark when he saw the mystery woman before, too. “Yes,” he said. “I’m sure.”
“Good.” Tanya lifted the disk overhead with one hand. With the other, she pulled out a pocketknife and flicked open the blade. The magic thrummed around them. If one wishes to cast a spell, Alestair had told him, one only has to reach out and pluck those ley lines.
Tanya sliced the dried herbs and immediately the disk shot out of her hand, straight up into the air. For a moment it hovered in the yellow lights of the rooftop, glinting a little. The cut herbs flapped like wings, and Gabe could hear, barely, their soft papery fluttering.
The charm turned, first left then right, and then it swooped down toward the street, throwing off a silver glow like moonlight.
“Follow it,” Tanya said, and Gabe did.
• • •
The magic filled Zerena. The power of the ley line swelled inside of her, and she could feel each of her individual cells as they moved in the formation of her body and her soul. She lifted her voice, the words spilling out of her as if they were animals freed from a trap. The Aramaic sliced across her tongue.
They stood in a circle, eight people total, their hands clenched together. In the center of the circle a fire burned, made of sage and hibiscus and stinging nettle. The ninth person stood waiting in the corner with the sacred clay jars. Four thousand miles away, in Xi’an, China, a group of eight sorcerers did the same, only their fire burned juniper, ash, and cardamom, charging the ley line with power to call down the elementals.
And it was working. Zerena gasped, gripping her partners’ hands even tighter. She shouted the chant, conjuring the energy out of the ground. Flowers sprouted from the floorboards; vines crept across the walls.
The earth elemental was here.
Zerena grinned around her chanting. She lifted her gaze to the ceiling, and for half a second, in the firelight and shadows, she actually saw it. A woman’s face, transparent as gauze, with roses for eyes.
She gasped, threw herself into the magic. They needed salt now. Both elementals would be theirs, contained in the sacred jars, ready to be inserted into new Hosts.
And when this ritual worked, what better acolyte to serve as Host than Zerena Pulnoc, the brave soldier who drew earth and salt to them, dragging the lost elements through the city to be laid at Terzian’s feet?
Through the firelight, she caught a glimpse of Sasha. He did not look pleased.
Zerena threw back her head, crying the chant up into the air. Come home, salt. Come home to us.
She tasted it before she felt it, a taste like the sea. The air blurred with a threadbare white
ness, and salt settled in a fine powder over her skin. The salt elemental whipped through the room, a streak of white that trailed salt like snow.
“They’re here!” cried Terzian. “Prepare the vessels!”
The ninth sorcerer, some low-ranking acolyte who had yet to earn the right to participate fully in rituals, scurried forward, the two jars tucked under his arms. He tripped over the vines curling across the floor and for a moment Zerena saw the whole thing fall apart—but he caught himself, and the jars remained whole and unsullied.
The acolyte set the vessels down in the center of the circle and crouched with the two lids, ready to seal them tight once the elementals were secure.
“Begin!” screamed Terzian, and in unison they shifted their chanting to a language too old to have a name. Zerena knew the eight Chinese sorcerers had done the same; she could feel the shift in the energy of the ley line. They needed one power to draw the elementals to them, another power entirely to trap them in the sacred jars.
Magic and salt and earth swirled around the room. The chaos filled Zerena with a frenzied, ecstatic exhilaration. She could taste her victory like she could taste the salt on the air, and when the flowering vines curled around her ankles, she knew it was the earth giving her its congratulations.
• • •
Gabe could barely see the silver disk as it careened through Prague, herb-wings flapping, its silver finish flashing whenever it passed beneath a streetlamp. Fortunately, Tanya seemed to have no trouble at all with it, and she ran with a fierce determination, gaze fixed on the charm.
The hitchhiker thumped in time with Gabe’s heartbeat. Magic was kissing the air.
The charm darted down an alley, whipped around a corner, led them back up the way they had come.
“It’s leading us in circles!” Gabe shouted.
“This is just how it works,” Tanya replied, each word punctuated by a sharp huff of breath. “It’s a tracker. It’s showing us the path the target took.”
They ran down now a narrow side street, the charm flitting up ahead. The hitchhiker surged. Gabe stumbled, righted himself. He smelled the faint metallic tang of the Vltava. God, where the hell where they? He could only hope the tracker didn’t take him by Edith’s building. The last thing he wanted was for her to glance out her window and see him bolting down the street like a madman in the company of a KGB officer.
He’d thought this would be simple.
They burst out of the tight clump of buildings. City lights gleamed up ahead, reflecting in the dark river water. The hitchhiker swelled again, a feeling like a fever dream, and Gabe cursed and pushed himself forward. Tanya was still going, running straight toward the nearest bridge. The charm glimmered in the air above the river.
The river was above a ley line, Gabe remembered as he jogged after her, the hitchhiker dancing inside his skull. And whatever had gotten the ley lines stirred up earlier had them roiling now. Was it tied to the Flame? To whatever was dampening their magic somehow, like Alestair had said? But no, Gabe could feel their magic just fine; and the charm was flinging itself into the tangle of the city like a damn heat-seeking missile.
He hoped whatever it found would give them some answers.
• • •
Zerena could feel the strength of their magic in the marrow of her bones. Her chanting echoed inside her skull. She focused her attention on the two sacred jars, her whole body shaking with the effort, as if she were physically dragging the elementals from the air, shoving them into the places they belonged.
The acolyte held the jars upright. The muscles in his arms strained, and his face was pale and ashy and beaded with sweat.
The earth elemental sank down toward the jars, moving like honey through the air. Get in get in get in. The magic in the room was so thick it was difficult to breathe, but it was working. The elemental moved closer—
Closer—
Closer—
It slipped into the jar. The acolyte slammed the lid down and scratched the containment rune with an obsidian knife. The jar rattled and the sorcerer pressed his hand against it, holding it in place. Good boy. Now they needed to focus on the salt elemental.
Salt whipped around the room in widening circles, frenzied with magic. Zerena trembled. She was losing energy. They all were. But it would only take one more burst of effort to drag the salt elemental into its jar. And that she could do. That, she was certain of.
The magic wavered.
It was like looking in an old mirror; everything became distorted. The voices of the circle stretched out. The room seemed to shift angles. Zerena blinked, and everything went back to normal. Just her imagination. Just getting tired—
Except there was a crack in the sacred jar, the one that contained the earth elemental. And the ninth sorcerer, he was tipping backwards, his eyes closed, pale blue lines fragmenting along the sides of his face.
“No!” Zerena screamed, just as the jar shattered. The earth elemental flew out in a fine green mist, and for a sweet second Zerena could feel the strength of it as it passed through her. For that sweet second, she almost thought it had chosen her, after all.
But then the room descended into chaos. The circle was ripped apart by the force of the elemental, and the flowers and vines swelled in their growth, crawling over everything. Zerena screamed and yanked at the vines, breaking them off in her hand. “Get back!” she shouted at the others. “Back in the circle! We can’t lose them!”
But they had lost them. Both elementals flew out through the chimney, taking their magic with them.
Zerena stumbled backward, numb with disbelief. She slammed up against the vine-covered wall. Her dress was ruined from the salt. She stared at the circle as its members picked themselves up, shaking off the aftereffects of magic. Sasha turned toward her, his eyes glowing with delight.
“You fools!” she shouted. “You idiots! How could you break the circle? My instructions made it perfectly clear—”
“Your instructions were flawed, Zerenochka,” Sasha said.
She wanted to kill him. She wanted to wrap her hands around that thick neck of his and squeeze until the breath dried up inside of him.
“I agree,” said Terzian.
Zerena froze. Terzian picked his way toward her, his cane thumping on the wooden floor. He wove past the broken jars—even the jar for the salt elemental had cracked, and was useless now. Zerena fixed her gaze on that ruined vessel.
“This was not the outcome I was promised,” Terzian said. “I’m disappointed, Zerena.”
Sasha beamed at her. He was like a child, pleased to see one of his schoolmates bent to the paddle for his own misbehavior.
“There must have been a weak link in the ritual,” Zerena said. She could not look at Terzian. Could not face the shame of seeing his disappointment. “My spell was perfect. I checked it several—”
“Clearly,” Terzian said. “It wasn’t.”
He turned away from her, walked toward the exit. Zerena just stared at the shattered clay. It wasn’t the only thing that was broken.
• • •
The charm was finally slowing down.
“Thank God,” Gabe gasped, falling out of his jog and into a walk. He was sweating despite the cool night air. At least the hitchhiker had calmed down—which meant they had moved away from the ley lines. Strange.
“Where are we?” Tanya peered up at the buildings. “Do you know this place?”
Gabe glanced around, catching his breath. “Warehouses,” he said. “Must be some kind of industrial district.”
The charm floated along, twisting back and forth, a dog sniffing after a scent.
“Is it just me or have the ley lines gone still?” Gabe asked.
“It’s not just you.”
“What does that mean, then?”
“What?” She kept her eyes on the charm, which was leading them through the rows of warehouses. The air smelled of sawdust and old fish. Broken glass glittered on the road.
“Well, w
e felt the ley lines going crazy, but now that the charm almost has us at its target—I mean, that’s what it’s doing right? That’s why it slowed down?”
“Yes,” Tanya said slowly. She put a hand on Gabe’s arm, pulling him to a stop. The charm knocked up against the door of one of the warehouses up ahead. Over and over again, knocking against the door.
Tanya hissed something in one of those unfamiliar languages Gabe had come to associate with magic, and the charm fell to the ground, disintegrating into dust.
“She’s in there,” Tanya said, nodding at the warehouse. “Let’s go.”
They slunk into the shadows, moving along the side of the building. There was a single window cut into the metal wall, and it was lit with thin golden light. The hitchhiker was completely still.
“No magic,” Gabe whispered.
“I know,” Tanya whispered back. “I don’t like it.”
The ley lines had been going mad, as if being strummed by strong magic—but Gabe and Tanya were nowhere near a line now. Whoever was inside that warehouse hadn’t been doing any kind of major ritual. Such rituals required ley lines. Even Gabe could figure that much out.
Which meant someone else had been using the lines.
“How do you want to tackle this?” Gabe asked.
“I’m thinking.”
So was Gabe. The place only had the one window, and the front door—it wouldn’t do to just stroll in, announce their presence. At least the charm knocking up against the door hadn’t caught the attention of anyone inside.
“This way,” Tanya said, and Gabe followed her, around to the back of the warehouse. A service door was tucked into the corner. Padlocked, but that wasn’t going to be an issue for either of them.
“Nice thinking.” Gabe nodded at the padlock. “You want to get that or should I?”
“I don’t need you to pick a lock for me.” She darted up to the door. Lifted the padlock. Gabe peered over her shoulder. The thing was ancient, laced with rust—no one had used this door for ages.
The Witch Who Came In From The Cold: The Complete Season 2: The Complete Season 2 (The Witch Who Came In From The Cold Season 2) Page 15
