Curses & Blood

by Kim Richardson

  My father’s smile grew ugly. “The spell required the blood of three powerful half-breeds. It didn’t matter which ones.” His eyes flicked to Irva. “She was getting too close, sticking her fae nose where it didn’t belong.” He chuckled. “She bled like a pig, that one. Buckets of blood.”

  I knew somewhere was another dead half-breed he’d murdered, gutted, and left on display to break the second seal. But there wasn’t time to drill him about that.

  “The EAM are fanatics,” I pressed. “They’re crazy. Crazy enough to commit suicide rather than be captured by their enemies. And you helped them. Chose them over your own people. Why? Why did you do this for these humans?”

  “For them?” laughed my father, his eyes gleaming with a manic glee. “I didn’t do it for them. I did it for me.”

  “Spoken like a true psychopath,” muttered Faris. “It’s always about them. Isn’t it?”

  Another wave of nausea and weakness hit, and I gritted my teeth against it. “So, you tricked them. No big surprise there. But you’re a witch?” I took a step forward, never losing sight of the book. “You’ll die! You already look sick. Have you lost your mind!”

  My father threw back his head and let out a laugh that was both unsettling and creepy. Because he sounded pleased that he’d orchestrated it all. Delighted that he’d brought the end of magic. The end of us all.

  “Just look at him, Sammy,” said Faris. “The witch has lost his marbles. He’s cracked.”

  My father looked at me, his eyes gleaming with fever. “I will never die.” He coughed and spat the blood from his mouth, but most of it remained around his lips, dribbling off his chin. “You were the cursed child. And I turned my back on the Goddess because she cursed me with you. I had prayed for a boy. Give me a boy, I said to her.” He shook his head. “She didn’t want to hear me. She never did. And instead she gave me you. I tried to kill you.”

  “I remember.”

  His smile faltered. “I’d made a deal with a demon. A transference. Your soul in exchange for your power. Yes. It was all worked out. I just needed you to die. Your death was going to empower me and give me more power than any other witch. But Gordon interfered. He stopped me before I could finish you.”

  “Gordon rocks,” cheered Faris.

  My father shook his head. “I was enslaved to the demon for years after I failed to produce your soul.” His expression clouded. “But all that’s in the past. It doesn’t matter. A witch’s magic is weak. It was never enough. But now I have something better. Greater.” He started to laugh harder, making me want to kick him in the face with my boot.

  I gauged the distance between me and the book. Twenty feet tops. But my father was in the way.

  Utterly delusional, he spat several words that might have been a Dark curse of some kind, but his mania was too great to allow him to focus it into a spell. The witch had lost his mind.

  My father began to pace, throwing his hands in the air. “Power. Magic. Strength. It all serves a single purpose—to gives its possessor a broader spectrum of choices. It allows the possessor to do what they want. But what is power if you don’t have everlasting life? What is power if you cannot be eternal?” His face twisted into a smile, but it looked more like a snarl. “And now I have found it.”

  “What you’ve found is a giant can of dumbass.” I shook my head.

  “I will be the most powerful witch in the world. With no more magic to compete with me. I will be a god.”

  Holy hell. “So, that’s what this is about. You. Thank the cauldron I get my smarts from my mother’s side. This little plan of yours won’t work. The Veil is collapsing because of this spell you did. And once it does, it’ll be all over for everyone. Half-breeds, angel-borns, humans. The whole lot of us. There won’t be anyone left for you to show off your powers to. Only demons. And then, they’ll probably eat you too if you don’t die first.”

  “I will be resurrected,” he said, and I could see in his eyes as they suddenly burned with a manic fever that he truly believed it.

  The witch was insane. “You thought completing this spell would make you eternal? It won’t. It’s going to kill you.” Clearly he was demented. I didn’t know how it happened, perhaps all those years as a demon’s bitch had screwed with his mind. I didn’t care. The witch was a menace. He was evil.

  “You’re a psychopath,” I continued. “Heartless. Empty. You don’t care about anyone but yourself. It’s like they say… people don’t change. Once an evil bastard… always an evil bastard.”

  I’d had enough of him. It was time to do what I came here to do.

  My eyes locked on the book. I made to move.

  The ground shook.

  The concrete heaved around my feet. I stumbled several steps back and watched as segments of the patio shook, loosening up. The patio rumbled, and then a slit of waving black water appeared above it. The slit widened until I faced a clawed hand the size of my head. The hand reached out and gripped the edge of the patio, followed by another hand. Horns were next, accompanied by a monstrous snout and a mouth full of teeth that could swallow me whole. Something big, with a cavernous, resonating chest snarled from the depths of the Rift. Fiery red eyes found me. The demon bellowed and pulled itself further out of the Rift.

  A glowing white sphere zipped past my head and hit the Rift, blasting into an explosion of brilliant white light. I had to look away. When I opened my eyes, the Rift was gone. So was the giant horned demon.

  “Sorry I’m late,” said Logan as he rushed up next to me. “What did I miss?” I needed to get my hands on those moonstones.

  With Logan safe and the Rift gone, I moved toward the book, trying not to look at Irva’s cut-up corpse. For a moment, I thought my father would intervene, but when I looked back, he was kneeling at the same spot on the patio, smiling with blood trickling down his mouth and chin.

  He raised his arms in the air as if in prayer and chanted, “Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”

  Not this again.

  Something ugly flickered far back in his eyes. Then he pulled a knife from beneath his cloak and slashed across his wrist.

  What the hell?

  “Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die,” repeated my father. “He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”

  Then he sliced his other wrist.

  If he wanted to die, that was his choice. I wasn’t going to stop him.

  I came here for the book. I didn’t come here to save the life of a man I didn’t believe deserved to live.

  “You need to hurry, Sammy,” called Faris, his face tight as he pointed somewhere off to the left.

  I leaned over and looked beyond the hedges. Swarms of demons massed together in the parking lots, slamming in a titanic wave that crushed the humans around them and was followed by a surge of desperate cries and screams for help.

  Bile rose in my throat as I shuffled forward. A nauseating quiver of dark power hit me like an alarming sense of the presence of something ancient and powerful.

  If I touched the book, I had a feeling I would lose myself over to it. Like my father.

  Yeah. I didn’t think touching it was a great idea. But I didn’t need to.

  “It’s time for you to burn,” I whispered.

  I raised my hands, rammed my will through the last of my magic, and shouted, “Feurantis!”

  A jet of fire roared out of my hands and hit the Magicae Lucis.

  The book lifted in the air as a thick cover of yellow and orange flames rolled over it until it was a ball of fire. The book hit the ground as the flames licked and rose like a flaming log.

  The effort of the spell was monumental. I staggered and swayed on the spot, feeling darkness creeping along the edges of my mind.

  “I’ve got you.” Faris was there. He held me up with his strong arms as we both watched the book burn.

  “You did it, Sammy,” sai
d the mid-demon. “It’s all over now.”

  I tried to smile, but I could barely keep my eyes open. I had to keep them open. I had to see. I had to witness the last of the book. Then I would sleep for a month.

  I watched as the flames slowly died, expecting to see a charred book, or just a pile of ash.

  But when the last of the flames wavered and then dissipated, the book gleamed in the moonlight, the leather just as smooth and perfect as before. Not a burn mark or even a scratch.

  I stared, sick with dread as a torrent of fear grew in the pit of my being.

  It didn’t work. My magic didn’t work.

  CHAPTER 26

  “You can’t burn the Magicae Lucis,” laughed my father, low and confident and lazy. “Why do you think the Council had it hidden away in their vault? It wasn’t because they wanted to preserve a piece of history. It was because they couldn’t burn it. It can’t be destroyed. You can’t kill something that’s eternal! It can never die!” He laughed again, and again, a laugh that could never have come from a simple set of mortal lungs. And then his laugh turned into a gargle and he began coughing up blood.

  My anger flared as I looked at the book and my eyes narrowed. “Feurantis!” I flung out my hands—

  And nothing happened.

  Wetness dripped from my nose, and I tasted more blood in my mouth. Heart pounding, my body shook from the spent magic, and I let the agony of the last magic from my sigil rings roll through me.

  I felt Faris staring at me, but I couldn’t look at him. “I… I can’t. I have nothing left,” I said, feeling the prick of tears as I mourned the loss of my magic.

  “Let me try.” Faris let me go.

  The mid-demon stood above the book. His face was ugly with hatred. I’d never seen it so raw in him before. In a blur of limbs and darkness, Faris flung out his hands in violent blows of his demonic magic. Black tendrils of darkness slammed into the book, over and over again until Faris’s forehead broke into a sweat.

  The mid-demon stepped back. Curls of steam and the scent of burnt leather rose from the book and began to thicken and gather into dense tendrils of black magic. Tongues of black flames followed a moment later.

  Holding my breath, I watched as the black fire pulled back.

  The book was unscathed. Perfect. It was as though Magicae Lucis was laughing at us.

  So was my father.

  “You cannot kill what cannot die!” he howled in laughter. The air shimmered near him. Another Rift was about to open.

  I fell to my knees, a wave of desperation hitting me over and over again until I felt as though I were drowning. I dropped to my side, overwhelmed by pain, fatigue, and the feeling of failure.

  I’d failed. It was all over.

  I felt a presence. I looked up to find Logan staring down at the book. In the next moment, he yanked out a gleaming silver blade, a soul blade, and stabbed the old book with it—or at least he tried to. With every strike, the tip of his blade bounced off. The book was impenetrable as though it were made of steel.

  Frustrated, he pulled out his gun and began shooting. I gave him points for originality. He even looked good doing it. But Magicae Lucis simply bounced around with the pressure of the bullets, though they didn’t even leave a scratch.

  “What kind of book is this?” he said, his face bewildered.

  “A real bitch,” growled Faris, his hands on his head looking like he was about to pull his hair out or cry.

  The air cracked and hissed like an electrical storm. I blinked as twenty Rifts popped into existence. Forty, I counted. Sixty-three… eighty-two…

  It was as though the world’s atmosphere was riddled with black holes, like sheets of Swiss cheese. The Rifts were opening everywhere, plaguing the earth with its demons until very soon, there would be only one giant Rift. And there would be nothing but death and blood.

  It was over. We’d lost.

  “Your magic was never special. You were never special,” mocked my father, his voice weak and his pale face getting paler. Blood spilled down from his wrists and pooled on the patio around him. “How can you borrow magic when there’ll be no one left with magic in the world? On this earth?”

  And then it hit me. Of course!

  Gritting my teeth, I pushed myself up on my hands and knees. Adrenaline pounded, sweet, glorious adrenaline. My mind cleared. I could focus.

  I felt as though this was my reason in life. My true purpose. My destiny. As though I finally understood why I had this power. Why I had been born different with the ability to borrow magic from others.

  The magic from my rings was spent. But not in that special reserve. Not in that place that made me different.

  To destroy the book, I knew I needed a well of magic, something strong enough, something magnanimous with the power to destroy what seemed indestructible. I needed power equivalent to that of the universe.

  I needed power from the earth.

  The earth was magic. There was magic in the trees, in the flowers, the air, the seas. It was everywhere in a colossal amount.

  I stepped off the patio to a small patch of grass. I fell to my knees and dug my hands and fingers into the earth until my fingers were covered in the cold, moist earth.

  I closed my eyes and tapped into that well of magic, to the core of power within me.

  And then I called the earth’s magic.

  Thunder rumbled. The air buzzed with raw energy, pulsing through the clouds. My hair and clothes lifted around me. I could feel the power in the soil and the grass and trees, in the lakes and oceans. I could feel the water rolling through the Hudson River, the air blowing the rainclouds across the sky. I could sense the fire in the candles, feel the fire of lightning, leaping from cloud to cloud above and waiting to be unleashed.

  All four elements, interacting, moving, energy flashing.

  And then I bent them to my will.

  With a burst of strength, I pulled on the earth’s magical elements and combined them with my own. Energy crackled against my skin—the energies from the elements, tingling like cold pricks.

  My back arched as the power flooded in, painful and delicious and abundant. I shook as a giant slip of that power ripped through me.

  I opened my eyes and let it loose.

  A burst of white, yellow, blue, and green light blasted from my chest and hit the book.

  The book was tossed into the air. It spun around like a top, faster and faster, light exploding from the pages and making it look like a brilliant, miniature star. There was a sudden vibration in the air, as Magicae Lucis folded on itself, over and over, until it became as small as a die. Then with a final pop, the book was no more.

  The pressure in the air drifted and disappeared. I looked to the Rifts as one by one they rolled, shimmered and then dissolved.

  It was over.

  I looked up to find Logan staring at me, his expression almost sick with fear. Faris stood beside him, also staring at me, though somehow managing to look impressed.

  “You think you succeeded?” screeched my father, his voice almost sounding like someone else’s. “You failed. You all failed. Magicae Lucis is forever! At last the masquerade ends!”

  Obviously, he’d missed the show.

  I wavered, my eyelids so heavy I could barely keep them open. I didn’t feel like passing out from exhaustion at the moment. I had just saved us all, but that nap was calling to me right about now.

  But after what happened next, I was glad I sleep.

  A large, thick black hand came through the Rift that had materialized next to my father. Then an eight-foot beast of a man in a red suit with two, striped red and black bull horns stepped out of the Rift.

  For a moment, my father seemed to wake from his crazy-ass stupor. “It’s not time yet. It’s not finished!”

  With a powerful thrust of his arm, the horned demon wrapped a large hand around my father’s neck. There was a squeal of surprise and then panic as the giant demon yanked my father off of his feet. With my father
wailing and dangling in the demon’s grip, the demon stepped back into the glistening gateway and vanished. The Rift shimmered and then closed.

  “Just FYI, Sammy,” I heard Faris’s voice. “That, was Naberius.”

  Okay. I’d pictured him bigger.

  And then, for obvious reasons, I passed out.

  CHAPTER 27

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” asked Faris for the third time.

  “I am,” I answered, knowing this was the right thing to do. I knew it in my core, in every fiber of my witch being, all the way to the twitching of my witch toes.

  “Really, really sure?”

  I let out a sigh. “That’s what I said.” He was especially annoying this afternoon. More than usual. My heart gave a thump. I was going to miss that.

  “Just checking,” he answered. The mid-demon looked to the ground for a moment, emotions playing along his jaw and forehead. He looked comfortably attractive with his black pants and matching shirt. His dark hair was styled in that perfect blend of modern sophistication, and his eyes were alight with anticipation and possibilities. “Because if you do this… you can’t go back. Once you say the spell… that’s it. There’s no undo button.” I could feel the laughter in his voice, but it did nothing to hide the nerves I felt in it too. He was nervous. Maybe even a little scared.

  I pressed my lips together to hide my smile. “Are you going to shut up so I can get on with it? Or do you plan on pestering me to death?” Hands on my hips, I tapped my toes on the hardwood floor of my third-floor loft working area.

  It had been two weeks since Magicae Lucis had been destroyed. And, though the Rifts had let in thousands of demons, the paranormal community (both half-breeds and angel-born) had come together and fought the demons until sundown. The demons that weren’t killed were either destroyed by the rising sun or ran back to their homeland.

  In the following week, I’d also returned Astrid’s skull back to her grave as promised. With Logan’s help, we’d covered it up again along with her sister’s grave, though we’d never found her remains. If the Gray Council knew, they were tightlipped about it.