Bound Powers

by Saruuh Kelsey

  Maisie brushed close to Joy’s ankles as Victoriya and Neil, two steps in front of them, reached the front door. They did not knock—Neil took a thin length of charcoal from his pocket and sketched a rune, the sound of tumblers rearranging horribly loud in the quiet night. Victoriya ripped open a sachet with her teeth, gripping her wand in a pale fist, and as the contents scattered, fire burst to life in her palm. It rose in strong lines until a lantern had formed in her slender fingers, entirely flame.

  “Ready?” she asked, casting a tense look at all of them, Joy and Eilidh with their pale faces, Maisie wound tight enough to bite, and Neil, silent and steadfast. A cat, a seagull, and a pack of dogs close behind them. Victoriya’s eyes hardened. “Let’s do this—for Mrs. Mackenzie.”

  Strength filled Joy, determination chasing off the freezing edge of fear. For her mum, for justice—she would do this.

  Victoriya tapped the door handle with her fiery wand and led them inside.

  Joy moved carefully so the crystals and potion bottles in her coat pockets didn’t clank together. Her breath came short but she wasn’t flinching or running from this. At the front of their tight procession, Victoriya’s lantern lit the way down a tidy hallway with family portraits lining the walls, past a front room with a dominating TV and corner sofa, into an ultra-modern kitchen. The family who lived here weren’t downstairs but that wasn’t strange for this time of night. Joy tightened her grip on her crystal wand, swapping her bloodstone for a diamond to give her clarity, to keep her going, unwavering, towards the bastard who killed her mum.

  Had she suffered? Had it hurt, what they did to her? Fury and resolution beat through her blood as they turned and, as one, made for the stairs. Maybe they’d just find the family sleeping in their beds, no villain in sight, but Joy doubted it.

  Eilidh touched Joy’s arm, soft enough to not startle, and Joy met her eyes as they reached the landing. She pointed at the nearest open door and its empty bed beyond. A kid’s room, with painted animals on the walls and a scattering of toys across the carpet. Joy raised her wand and stepped inside, searching its nooks and corners with Eilidh and Maisie as Victoriya and Neil went on. The cat and Theodore followed Joy and Eilidh, silent except for the whoosh of wings. Nothing menacing met them but that only increased the fear, the waiting.

  Joy’s heart pounded as they returned to the corridor, spying Victoriya’s rope of dark hair swinging into a room at the end of the hall. Joy’s grip on her wand was turning slick as her unease grew. Her nostrils burned, tingled with that corrupt magic, and her head filled with pressure. Were they getting close? Joy gripped the diamond in her left hand so hard it bit into her palm.

  Victoriya yelled a warning—too late. Joy spun, stumbling down the hallway as something swept down her spine like a palm, but icy cold. For a second fear suffocated her, so pure it burned, and her vision filled with a nightmare, a memory she couldn’t escape: the creak of her mum’s door as she pushed it open, the utter stillness of her mum in bed, the cold of her skin.

  But Joy shook herself, stumbling back another step, and the vision faded. Her heart hammered. Maisie hissed, echoed by the cat. There was something here with them, something that inflamed the burning in Joy’s nose and ears, but she couldn’t see it. Joy ripped off her gloves with her teeth.

  The wand in her hand shook as she raised it at the dishonestly empty hallway, the stretch of beige carpet with her coven’s muddy footprints on it, the landscape paintings on the walls, none of it blocked or marred by a person’s shadow. But there was someone there, Joy could feel it.

  Wind raised the hairs on the back of Joy’s neck, unsettled her heartbeat, and as much as she wanted to keep her eyes pinned to the empty floor in front of her, instinct grabbed her head and turned it—but it was only Theodore swooping over their heads, his white wings spread on either side of him as he released a shrill cry.

  Joy snapped her eyes back to the hallway in front of her as Victoriya and Neil joined them, forming a tightknit group in the corridor, watching as Theodore curved his wings and swept down, razor sharp beak aimed at a point directly across from Joy. Joy braced herself for the sound of him smacking into the small window at the end but instead there was a dull sound, and he stopped abruptly, clearly hitting something. And as his beak surely cut into the figure in the hall, Joy saw the illusion ripple, the empty hallway revealing someone—something—stood before them as if a veil had been pulled back.

  Joy stumbled back a step, Eilidh and the others tripping with her as they retreated. Eilidh’s familiar flapped his wings, his beak tearing free from where it had lodged in—skin? A mask? No. Joy stared, frozen as she began to understand what she was seeing. It had definitely been elven at one point, the ears a gentle point, limbs long and lanky, but the creature stood in front of her was covered in blackened bark. Cracks ran down its arms, its sculpted chest, its bony face, revealing lighter wood beneath. It wore only ragged jeans, no shoes, no top. It was … Joy didn’t know. She understood what Mrs. Nazari had meant when she said it was a corrupted elf. Nothing natural could do this.

  Victoriya swore, a whispered string of fearful foulness, as they tripped over their feet in their haste to get away. Eilidh snagged Joy’s arm, pulling her out of the trance of shock as Maisie nipped at her ankles, both of them urging her to get back, get away. Joy kept her wand pointed forward even as it trembled into a blur.

  “It’s…” Eilidh whispered. “The stairs—”

  Joy’s stomach sank, pushing bile up her throat. The creature was blocking their way out. Unless they broke a window and jumped out, they weren’t going anywhere. Cold spread through Joy as her breath hitched. They were trapped, fenced in, and this … thing standing between them and the way out … this was what had killed her mother.

  Icy fury coursed through her, shoring up the parts of her eroded by fear. She hesitated, for a flash of a moment, remembering how it had felt to touch Perchta, to cleanse the bad in her ... to rip out her wicked witchcraft. She’d spent so long terrified to do it again but now she was here, in acute danger with her coven threatened, the hesitation didn’t last.

  She planted her feet, ripping her arm from Eilidh’s hand, and her wand was steady as she pointed it at the heart of the creature, squeezed the diamond in her other hand so hard it broke the skin, and recalled the words of a pain spell. She’d first heard the words when her mum had told her never to speak them, that it was cruel and unforgiveable, and later when she’d opened her eyes to the world around her and the dangers it posed to her, both as a mixed breed and a woman, and taught herself the words for self-defence.

  The last word of the spell sounded in her mind and Joy felt it take hold, buzzing down her arms, a tingle in her fingers, and the hand in front of her turned chalcedony blue. A sudden panic gripped her at the sight of it—how was she doing this, there was no water touching her—and her eyes fixed on her hand instead of the threat, the murderer standing and frowning before her as if trying to understand the group of witches. She’d done it again, used raw power, cast a spell without a potion or sachet or something else to dilute her awful power—

  But she saw the moment the spell hit and a shrieking, pained scream filled the hall that it was wrong. The creature didn’t drop to its knees as it should, didn’t convulse with the agony of it—it merely screamed and bore down on the pain, shoulders broadening, wooden hands curling into fists as bark cracked and, brittle, dropped to the floor.

  Tough hands grabbed Joy from behind and dragged her back, away from the creature that was rapidly unfreezing, growing angry if the crackling growl coming from its throat was any indication.

  “Good idea, Mackenzie,” Victoriya spat. “Piss the thing off. It’s not as if it’s already killed fourteen fucking people.”

  But Joy kept seeing her mum laid in bed, not sleeping but dead—dead and cold and empty. Murdered by this thing. Joy wanted it to disintegrate until there was nothing left but a pile of crumbled driftwood on the floor.

  Maisie shrieked
, butting her snout against Joy, then Victoriya. Neil swore.

  “What?” she breathed, not taking her eyes off the crumbling monster in front of her, pieces of its legs cracking as it lifted a foot, and then another—coming for them, for her. Joy remembered suddenly that it was her it had come for, not her mum.

  “There’s two more,” Victoriya spat. “There’s fucking three of them.”

  “What?” Joy’s fury stumbled and then just ... stopped. They weren’t getting out of this house. And the worst part of it all, if there was more than one of these elves, how could Joy ever know she’d caught her mum’s killer, avenged her death?

  Eilidh pressed her hand to her mouth to hold back a sob.

  Joy felt … empty. Like the attempt to hurt the creature had ripped something vital out of her. She looked at her wand hand, somewhere between pale skin and that blue tone, and all at once felt the sting of the diamond in her right hand. The diamond—had it disrupted the spell? Got in the way of Joy and her raw witchcraft? She unclosed her fist, letting the clear gem, tinged pink with her own blood, fall into her pocket of crystals.

  “Neil—what—?” Victoriya hissed but Joy couldn’t turn, couldn’t look away as slowly, clumsily, as if it had never been taught to walk, the elf moved towards her. She took a tight breath, her stomach in knots, and recited the spell, whispering it this time as she pointed her wand at the creature, curling her free hand into a fist. The spell hit again—and had no effect other than slowing its next step.

  It was close, too close, the hallway shrinking around Joy, the space between her and her mum’s murderer getting smaller and smaller until Joy couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand her scraping breaths, shaking hands, frantic thoughts. She pictured her wand sharpening, the neat tip able to slice like a knife, and with her witchcraft so jumpy and responsive, it rose quickly and her hand flared a blue so bright it was like looking into a pool.

  Bile rose again, hit the back of her throat as she made herself move forward, towards the creature when everything in her wanted to run, to find a way out even though it was impossible. She thrust the newly sharpened edge of her wand and the amethyst lodged into the chest of the creature, wood flaking around the puncture, drifting down her arm. It sank in, not into flesh but like an arrowhead lodged in an oak tree. Joy scrambled for action, for thought, as her wand buried itself in the body of this … thing, as its charred bark-covered arms lifted and its hands wound around her upper arms, fingers spreading like ivy up her arm.

  Shatter, she thought, the only word she could find in her cluttered mind. This time cold shot through her veins, a pure and cleansing ice Joy remembered from Perchta’s attack, and she knew it would work. Shatter, she begged her witchcraft, ordered her magic. If I really do have Bound Powers, let them shatter this thing, this—

  A loud crack filled her ears and she inhaled sharply, her throat sore, as a hairline fracture began at the creature’s chest and spread out, quicker than Joy’s eyes could track, down its limbs. Her wand was freed suddenly, the force of her struggling to pull it free jolting her backward a step, and she watched with open horror as the creature just … collapsed. A piece of driftwood, eroded in a second instead of over long years. Blackened bark slipped off, revealing amber wood, and that too crumbled.

  Maisie, at her feet, growled at the pieces of the elf—what had once been an elf—but they did not move, did not pull back together and resemble an elven figure again. Triumph rose for the shortest second, her mum avenged, justice delivered. But too quickly Joy remembered the other elves. Crushing disappointment erased all sense of accomplishment.

  Joy’s chest burned as she twisted, a different panic rising now for the rest of her coven, for the two of those things behind her. There was only one, female-shaped—a pile of ashes at its feet suggested Victoriya’s fire had been the other’s demise—and both Victoriya and Neil struggled with it. Neil sketched runes and sigils up the elf’s left forearm with his own blood out of desperation. Joy couldn’t even see where his bag of supplies had gone. Victoriya used no fire, and it took a frantic moment for Joy to figure out why. The creature had wound its hand around her wrist, thin black limbs branching up her arm to grip Victoriya’s shoulder. She couldn’t set it ablaze because she too would be burned. Joy fought back a sob of helplessness—but she wasn’t helpless.

  She took another scraping breath, stumbling on her leaden legs, pushing past Maisie and Eilidh until she could see the creature closer, see Neil’s messy, bloody lines on its skin, so different to his usual precise charcoal sigils. Joy lifted her wand, pointed at the elf, and commanded, shatter. Ice chugged through her heart, pumped through her blood.

  The charred layer pulled back to show rotting wood, bleached of all colour, and then that grew too brittle and soft to hold together the shape of the woman. Victoriya gasped and tugged her arm away as the thing fell apart and Neil spat a string of curses he’d learned from her.

  “How did you…” Eilidh trailed off. Maisie was looking at Joy strangely.

  Joy just stood there, wand held before her, hollow inside.

  For a long time they stood there, frozen, breathing heavily, processing their various pains and depleted inventories, and then Neil said, so softly, “We should leave.”

  Joy didn’t fight as Victoriya gripped her arm and led her past the empty bedrooms to the stairs, didn’t speak as they descended, Maisie and the cat at the head of the group. Joy’s nostrils burned, her head packing with pressure and wool but she walked, numb, and ignored the building discomfort.

  “There’s another one here,” Neil spoke quietly, his eyes flitting from Victoriya, to Joy, to Eilidh. His eyes settled on Maisie. “Could you go ahead and—”

  “No need,” Victoriya said through gritted teeth, tightening her hand around Joy’s arm—almost painful enough to shock her out of this fugue. Almost. “There it is.” Victoriya jerked her chin at the bottom of the stairs, the hallway visible over its bannister. The whole hall was full of those blackened creatures. “And it brought friends.”

  Pride

  Gabi lunged out of the way, breath scraping her throat, as the grass beneath her rippled then tore, revealing loose dirt, the elf’s twisted magic manipulating the garden around Gabi and the witches—a plain stretch of grass left to grow wild with a cheap plastic table and chairs. Gabi heard Gus swear and Salma huff a curse, but she kept her eyes on the elf, not willing to be distracted. Even if sympathy beat at her for what had been done to this elf.

  Gabi could see its species but she couldn’t feel that elven connection, not the way she’d felt Santiago instantly, like drawing to like. It was—he was—unrecognisable. Skin cracked all over, so dark a brown it was close to black, with smoke oozing out of the cracks across his body like tree sap. Gabi felt, so suddenly and unexpectedly, a knife of pity twist in her heart. Nobody should be made into this.

  But her sympathy had distracted her, and the elf launched an attack, the grass tearing apart.

  “What’s your name?” she asked him, ramping up the charge on her taser to full.

  The elf didn’t reply—only bucked the earth again and split the ground in another part of the garden, clearly choosing fight over flight. Inside the house, they’d caught him crouched over a sleeping couple, dark power roiling around the woman, but she didn’t sense anything elven about it. This time Gabi felt it, like an oozing poison in their air around them, crawling through the grass and dirt and trees down the path. The elf was infecting its surroundings, some wrecked bit of environmental magic still inside it.

  Gabi rallied her magic, sending a fist down into the core of her magic to draw up more, too fast. She went dizzy, widening her stance to account for her wobbly head. Gabi wanted, all of a sudden, to go back to the hotel and sleep. To take a break from all of this.

  “Elf...” The corrupt thing spoke, a ragged whisper. Gabi ached to hear the longing in it, trying so hard not to think about the horror her kin had been made into.

  She used the handful of magic to c
onnect with the trees, the grass, the earth, the paving stones, the wood of the fence—and convince them to repel the poison, to fight to push it out, shoving her own magic into them to expel the twisted elf’s own. It barely worked—the blackened elven magic gave barely an inch, and Gabi was swaying where she stood.

  “Elf...” the thing croaked again, reaching out gnarled fingers. His eyes were a bright, sorrowful blue. He reached out again, bucking the ground, and Gabi realised he wasn’t trying to hurt her but draw her closer.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Gus muttered under his breath and drew his wand in a vertical line in front of him and Gabi. Even with her muddy mind she understood it was a shield, and that he was writing sigils in the air, his preferred method of casting.

  The elf lumbered closer, hand in the air, beseeching.

  Salma kept chanting spells, tearing spell sachets open to scatter their contents across the grass, but none of them had any effect.

  Gabi drew a breath, holding it until she felt steady, and took the fight to him. If he was going to stay back and throw blackened magic at them, maybe it meant he was vulnerable in a one-on-one fight. Gabi had two options—grab her witches and run, leaving this killer here to kill again, or fight and try her damnedest to bring him in. Pitiful or not, he was still a killer. His blackened magic was proof, stinging her eyes, clogging her nose with blood.

  “Whatever your name is, you are under arrest.” She took step after step closer, fighting both the tremors and the waves of heavy, oppressive magic that stung her nose and screamed inside her head. Leaning heavily on Gus. Up close, the elf smelled of incense and smoky wood, a pleasant contradiction to the acid burning through her senses. “But, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court,” she continued. The world blurred out around her but she shook her head, snapping it back into focus.