by Cate Tiernan
Selene was hardly paying attention to me-perhaps she thought it would be amusing to see what I could come up with, what puff of breath I could throw against her turbulent hurricane of power. Bethany was almost unconscious now, and the coils were moving up Alyce and Hunter. I saw hard intent in his face but no fear, and my heart felt a searing pain at the thought of what he was going through and how he was facing it.
I remembered what it felt like to be wolf-Morgan. My birth father, Ciaran, had taught me a shape-shifting spell. I didn't remember most of it, but now I called on ancient Riordan power, the power of my mother and her mother before her, back through the generations. Help! I sent the message silently. Mother, help me. Help me now.
I closed my eyes, swaying for a moment as new words, at once unknown and familiar, streamed into my mind. I recognized the form of limitations of the shape-shifting spell, and silently I repeated them, putting everything I knew, everything I felt, every need I had into the words.
I was frightened, deathly frightened, yet felt I was pulled inexorably toward this future, this one direction. Silently I murmured the true name of the hawk. Then the pieces came together in my mind in a beautiful, dazzling, stained- glass window of magick, the three things I needed weaving themselves together in a spell so balanced and perfect and beautiful, I wanted to cry.
Bethany sagged in Selene's grasp. Alyce and Hunter were now fighting the deadly tethers around their necks. There was no more time-not one second.
"Rac bis han!" I shouted, throwing my arms wide. Selene whipped around to look at me. "Nal nac hagagh! Ben dan!" I had a moment to see her gaping, protruding eyes widen in shock, then I was forced double, and I was screaming in pain.
Even Alyce and Hunter stopped struggling to watch me, and I cried out, instantly regretting my decision through a thousand hours of ripping, racking pain that lasted less than a minute. My bones bent unnaturally, my skin was pricked with thousands of needles, my face was drawn forward like burning steel. There was no way of getting through this with dignity or even a show of bravery. I wailed, screamed, cried, begged for mercy, and finally ended up sputtering incoherently, lying on my side on the bed. I blinked and struggled to rise. The room was strange and hard to understand. My feet couldn't clutch the bed well, and I gave a clumsy hop so I could perch on the footboard. Hesitantly I flapped my wings, felt the latent power contained within.
I was a hawk. I had shape-shifted. I now had a hawk's laser sight, razorlike talons, and merciless, ripping beak. I sent a message to Selene: Catch me if you can. Then I gathered my wings to me, and with a brilliant burst of immense joy and an aching longing for air and freedom, I took flight, right through the closed and locked window. I felt the wood splinter, the glass shatter against my chest, but then I was soaring up, up, into openness. I heard glass raining down, and then, with a soft sound, my wings caught fire and I streaked through the sky.
A few, exhilarating moments later I sensed another hawk coming after me. It was Selene, back in the body she had usurped. However, that body had already been dead for several minutes, its systems breaking down, and as I glanced back for a millisecond, I saw that it flew with jerky, uncon-trolled movements, working hard to keep up with me.
Yet right now Selene seemed unimportant. A hawk's wild joy ignited in me as I wheeled effortlessly through the dark night air. I felt incredibly light and incredibly strong. A thousand scents came to me as I soared higher-the higher I went, the thinner and cooler the air was as it filled my lungs. I heard the flames on my wings whip fiercely through the air, but I felt no pain, no heat, only a terrible, righteous anger and an increasingly strong need for revenge. As ecstatic as I was, shooting through the night, my thoughts once again turned toward Selene. She had been haunting me all this time, appearing to me in Cal's form. She wanted me dead. She wouldn't ever stop until I was dead and the dark Woodbanes were able to flourish. I couldn't let that happen.
I tucked one wing slightly in and began a huge, sweeping arc at sixty miles an hour. The dark hawk was slowly gaining on me, and even from this great distance I saw the glint of hatred in it golden eyes, the overriding lust for my death, and I knew that this could end in only one way: her death. My victory.
Once more I began saying the Riordan power chant, hearing the words unspool in my mind, feeling my power strengthen and swell.
I'm a Riordan, I thought. I'm the sgiurs dan. This will end here, and my descendants will go on to help Woodbanes be everything they can be, on the side of good.
Then, like children responding to a dare, we squared off and faced each other, hovering for a moment in the onyx- colored sky. I felt everything in me coil and hesitate, and then, like a bolt of witchfire, I hurtled through the night toward Selene, aware that she also was streaking toward me. I was both falling and soaring, my wings tucked close, feet drawn up: I was a weapon, going eighty miles an hour downward toward my enemy.
I was on Selene so fast that I didn't have time to really expect it-it was only a few seconds before we were swerving at the last second so we wouldn't just crash into each other. Quickly I circled as tightly as I could, and then I let all my raptor instincts take over-I quit thinking like a human, quit being Morgan altogether. I let go of all that and let my hawk free.
I don't know who drew blood first-Selene or me. But we attacked at the same moment, and my hard beak shot forward and seized her flesh, pulling and ripping. I tasted her blood, warm and salty, at the same instant I was aware of a searing pain in my right shoulder. The next several minutes were a blur of feathers and fire and a fine mist of blood arcing through the air. Selene's feathers were scorched by my fire, and the acrid smell of burned feathers filled my sensitive nostrils. Harsh, raucous screams filled the air, upsetting and distracting me-and then I realized I was making them. Finally with one huge surge of power I rose up just enough to be able to clamp one of my vicelike feet around Selene's thick neck. It reached around and I squeezed my grip as tightly as I could, as if Selene were a rabbit and I was about to have lunch.
In a frenzy Selene's dark wings beat the air around me, obscuring my sight. But still I hung on. It was impossible to fly and hold on at the same time, so I swung my wings when I could and concentrated on closing, closing, closing on Selene's neck.
This is for Cal, whom you destroyed with your evil, I thought grimly. This is for me, whom you haunted and terrorized. This is for all the people you've hurt or used or killed. You are going to die here and now, at my hand.
When I had been a wolf, I had been seized with an overwhelming lust for the hunt, a palpable desire to track prey down and rip into it. I had been able to stop myself at the last second when I realized my prey was Hunter. I felt no such inclination to stop now. Every tenet I had been raised with against murder, against revenge-disappeared now as I felt myself slowly pressing the life from Selene's body.
We were spinning now, falling toward earth in a death spiral. I was unable to keep myself aloft and hold on to Selene at the same time, so I allowed myself to fall. Selene was still beating her wings, but more and more weakly. My claws, holding her neck, ached with the pressure, the tension of staying tight, but I was locked onto her and there was no way I would let go. I glanced down and saw with a sickening realization that the ground was rushing up to meet us. Soon I would crash, probably breaking every bone in my body. I didn't think even a hawk could survive that kind of collision. But at least I would take Selene with me.
All at once I felt the life force of Selene's hawk blink out. One breath later I was sure of it-the hawk was dead. I was maybe fifteen feet from the ground, and I loosed my talons and let Selene drop heavily to the ground. Then I began beating my wings backward furiously-how to land? I didn't know!
I did the best I could, slowing myself as much as possible and setting my feet in front of me. I ended up crashing, anyway, my feet running against the ground, my wings outstretched, but I lost my balance and tumbled head over claw several times in what must have been the most humiliating hawk landing ev
er.
Still, I didn't break anything, and as soon I stopped rolling, I was up on my feet and leaping over to Selene. Just as I got there, the hawk's mouth opened, and once again the oily black smoke began to coil outward. I slammed my foot around its neck, crushing it shut, holding it ruthlessly.
It was horrible-the dead bird's battered and bloody body flopping and struggling against me. My own blood running into my eyes and stinging them. The oily smoke of Selene's anam stopped short. This close to her, I felt her panic, her intense fury, her hatred, her venom and malice. I flapped my wings to keep my balance, hopping awkwardly on one foot while the other held on. It seemed like hours later, but at last I sensed the final, twitching, muffled death of Selene's anam. Trapped inside a dead being with no escape, she could not survive.
Selene Belltower was no more. Yet I didn't let go, not for a long time, not until the shaking of my muscles forced me to release my grip.
Then I released my hold, folded in my wings, and began the agonizing process of becoming myself.
Selene was dead, and I had killed her.
And I wasn't sorry.
14. Hunter
We got Morgan cleaned and patched up at Alyce's. She felt terrible about the broken window, and Alyce looked at her like she was insane when she offered to pay for it. Bethany didn't think any of her wounds actually needed stitches, but she did put butterfly bandages and poultices everywhere. Then I brought Morgan to Bree's house, about half an hour before the sun came up. We woke her up, and she helped me put Morgan to bed. I said we'd explain later. As soon as I was sure Morgan was asleep and safe, I took off and went home.
Once there I took a long, hot shower, getting blood and pain and evil off me. I dropped into my bed and passed out cold.
"Here, lad, have a cuppa," Da said. I heard his voice and groaned, but then the tantalizing scent of strong tea reached my nostrils and I struggled to surface.
I propped myself up on my elbows and took the hot mug. "Cheers."
"How are you? You look all worn out." I moaned. "Don't ask. I've had better weeks. What time is it?"
"Oneish. I've been thinking about that witch, Patrice," Da went on.
"Me too," I said, and told him about everything that had happened with Patrice and Robin in the woods last night. I sighed. "I'm thinking that maybe I should ask her to turn herself in to the council. I hate the idea, but I don't know what else to do. Despite how sincere she is, now that she's done something like this, I just can't see never keeping an eye on her again. And next time she would be much more subtle, more experienced. I don't know."
I took a big gulp of tea. Ahhh. "I know that if she absolutely refuses to turn herself in, I won't make her," I went on. "I won't strip her of her powers against her will. That's a bloody awful business."
"Well, maybe you won't have to," Da said. "Look." He took out a black-and-white composition notebook. "I've been working on a translation, from Middle Gaelic. It's been very unusual, very enlightening. It seems to have been a textbook from a Wiccan center of learning, back in the 1500s. I've been finding some incredibly unusual spells, and they're almost all to do with limiting powers in some way."
"Really?"
"Yes. I mean, these spells haven't seen light of day, as far as I can tell, in hundreds of years. When I was studying for my initiation, I never even touched on this category." He flipped past pages covered with his fine, scrawly handwriting and began reading me pieces of his translation.
My brain wasn't quite up to par after the events of the last two days, nowhere near enough sleep, the trauma of having Morgan go through what she had. I squinted up at my father.
"I'm not getting it," I said bluntly.
"Look," he said, a deliberately patient tone entering his voice. "I'm saying we take the basic form of this spell here because it does things in stages and can be broken up. Now, this spell"-he flipped through several pages-"is interesting because of how it sets out its limitations at the beginning, and the best thing is that it doesn't seem to be tied to the phase of the moon. This spell has a really good ending in how it wraps things up, seals things, in the way it controls its effects. So see? We take these parts from these three spells-plus one or two phrases from a couple of others- and create one spell from them. What do you think?"
I struggled to make sense of it. I sat up and took the notebook from him, flipping back and forth between the marked pages, reading his careful translations and margin notes. Slowly the picture began to seep into my troubled brain. My jaw dropped at its implication.
I looked up at Da. "Oh, Goddess-do you think it could work?"
He sat back on his heels, pleased. "I think it might."
"You are absolutely bloody brilliant," I said, and he laughed, tilting back his head.
"Can I get that in writing?" he said.
We took a couple of hours to carefully write out the whole, new, complete spell. The two of us went over it again and again, checking and cross-checking everything. Around four, an uncharacteristically domestic Sky brought us some tea and sandwiches, as well as some sample oatcakes from a recipe she was trying out for Beltane. "They're great," I said, practically spitting crumbs. "Go with it"
At last we felt ready.
Da and I were very familiar with the spell; there seemed to be no loopholes in it-it was exciting, different, as if we were about to make Wiccan history. Da must have felt this way about the dark wave spell, having created something beautiful and terrible out of nothing. It was funny, when I'd first found him in Canada, he'd been a mess. Now he really seemed to be excelling. It made me proud to be his son.
We drove over to Thornton, to Patrice's house. We'd called ahead, and she was expecting us. When we got there, she was alone, which surprised me. I would have thought she would have called, if not Celia or Robin, then at least some other friend or colleague.
"Thanks for meeting with us," I said as we stood awkwardly in her foyer. She looked tired and somehow beaten, as if she was going to give up now, since her most desperate plan hadn't worked.
I introduced her to my father, and like Celia and Robin, Patrice was a bit impressed to meet the dark wave destroyer. I let Da explain what we wanted to do.
"From what I understand, you've worked magick that could almost certainly get you stripped of your powers," Da said in his forthright way.
Patrice flushed and hung her head, the edges of fear showing in her eyes. "I know," she said, barely audibly.
"However, no one in authority knows about it yet," I said. "But anyone who knows about this will never forget it. Because there's always the possibility that you'll drift back to dark magick."
Her face blanched at these stark words. "So you seem a bit dangerous, do you see?" I asked, not meanly. "Once someone crosses the line, it seems so much easier for them to cross it again. People will be watching you, waiting for it to happen. But my father has crafted a spell that seems to address this particular situation. We believe that we can work a spell around you that will satisfy others' fears about you."
"You want to strip my powers," Patrice said dully, looking at the floor.
"No. We want to limit them, forever. But in a very specific way," Da explained.
"It's a bubble spell," I said. "A spell that affects your powers in a certain way for the rest of your life. As of today, it can't be undone. Your powers wouldn't actually be limited in strength, but in effect: if you agree to undergo this, you'll never again be able to affect any other living thing with your magick again."
Patrice gave me a quizzical look.
"You'll be able to make magick, beautiful, powerful magick. You'll be able to celebrate and take part in magickal rites. You'll be able to affect stone, mineral, air, and earth as much as you can now. But you won't be able to affect your son's health. You won't be able to rid yourself of the smallest headache. You won't be able to create a sleeping draught for a friend. You won't be able to do the peas-times-three spell on your garden."
She gave a slight smile at the
mention of a very basic spell that every witch child learns.
"You won't be able to call your dog with magick; you won't be able to scry to see other humans or animals or plants. But you'll be able to learn, to teach others, to witness magick, to participate, to feel the joy and satisfaction of creating something beautiful from nothing-just like any other witch."
"But because I can't affect any living thing, I can't harm anyone with dark magick," she said, looking thoughtful. "And neither could I help anyone with good magick."
"That's correct," Da said.
"I hate this," she said calmly.
"It's the best option you have right now," I said.
"You're right," she said, years of strain and fatigue in her voice. "How long will it take? I have to give Joshua his medicine at eight."
"It will take about forty-five minutes," said Da.
Trying not to cry, Patrice led us to her small circle room, in what used to be a butler's pantry, off her dining room. "Let's do it, then," she said.
It took longer than forty-five minutes because neither Da nor I had ever done it before. We also hadn't had an idea of what effect it would have on Patrice physically, and at one point she became so nauseated, we had to stop for a few minutes. But we followed each step carefully, as we had written it, and by a few minutes after six we said the final ending words.
When it was over, I felt drained and hungry. Da dismantled the circle, and I edged away and sat with my back against the wall. Patrice simply lay down on the wooden floor, right where she was, looking white and ill. Da also seemed very tired, but it was he who went to the kitchen and came back with a pitcher of iced tea and a package of cookies.
