by Kim Harrison
I wanted to turn away, but I couldn’t. I wanted to run, to leave it for someone else to deal with, but I couldn’t. It was me or no one.
“Oh my God,” Vivian said, and I jumped when I realized she was next to me, clutching my arm. I swallowed my bile down before I emptied my stomach. “This is why I know how to do black magic,” I whispered.
Vivian looked at me as Ku’Sox finally ate enough of the woman to kill her. Vivian’s eyes were wide, her mind not yet having found a way to believe what her eyes were telling her.
“Even dead vamps remember pity,” Ivy said, coming up on my other side.
“He-he…,” Vivian stammered, white faced and unable to say it.
“You think I know black magic for kicks?” I said harshly. “I’m trying to survive.” I shoved the sight of a demon in a silver suit biting a woman’s throat out to the back of my brain to wake me in a cold sweat later. What can I do? I thought as I found Pierce throwing up behind a table. Burn him? Like the curse I almost did in the garden? Could Pierce, Vivian, and I kill a demon together? My heart pounded, and I took a step forward, feeling Ivy’s hand take my bicep. I doubted we could kill him, but it was all I had. Killing Ku’Sox wasn’t murder, it was survival. And if it made me a black witch, then so be it.
My memory flicked back to Pierce crouched over Al and ready to end the demon’s life for his freedom. Maybe there was no difference between us after all, and the reason I was mad at Pierce was because I was seeing reflections of myself in him, and I didn’t like it.
Ku’Sox looked to the ceiling as a cascade of red-tinted ever-after washed over him, rebounding at the outermost point of his aura and soaking back into him. Tucking the dead woman under his arm, he headed for the door. I could hear sirens out there, and my heart hammered. Black craft or not, I couldn’t let him leave.
“Are we letting him go?” Pierce shouted, angry as he wiped his mouth and came out from behind the table.
I glanced at Ivy to tell her we weren’t, then Vivian, who still didn’t understand the reality of demons. “Yep,” I lied, leaning back and crossing my arms over my chest and rocking back on one foot. “This is not my problem.”
“What?” Vivian said, and I lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “You can’t let him walk out of here! He just killed two people!” she raged, her anger at her own naivete, her fear, and her disbelief finding an easy scapegoat in me.
I should have told her that this was all Trent’s fault, but I held my tongue as Ivy slinked away to take up a defensive position. “What do you want me to do, Ms. Coven Member? You’re telling me to do black magic? Huh? ’Cause that’s the only thing that he’s going to notice!”
She licked her lips, clearly at war with herself. Ku’Sox, though, was almost to the door.
“He’ll notice this,” Pierce said, and then, pulling on the line so heavily even Ku’Sox felt it, he threw a spell. Vivian gasped as it flew the distance, burning the very air as it passed. Ku’Sox spun, bouncing it back at us with a quickly instigated bubble.
“Down!” I shouted, and I dropped to the floor. The curse hit the stage, and the amp exploded, sending sparkles of ozone over us. “Damn it, Pierce! Watch what you’re doing!”
“Mmmm,” Ku’Sox said as he started back in our direction. “Curious accent to your spell work. Not at all like hers. Who taught you?”
“We can’t stop him!” Vivian exclaimed.
“Duh,” I said, trying to decide if Vivian was scared enough yet. If I could convince her that someone needed to know black magic, they might let me keep my mind when they shoved me back in Alcatraz. Sort of a plan B in case demons came visiting again.
Pierce jumped onto a table, shouting Latin, and seeing that he had Ku’Sox’s attention, I pulled Ivy and Vivian to me. “I have an idea,” I said, silently thanking God that Pierce was here—even if he was a black witch. I needed him. Al was right.
Vivian hesitated, but it was Ivy who said, “Like the fairies?”
I nodded, even as my heart seemed to clench. I was going to burn Ku’Sox—and I wasn’t going to stop the curse. “Vivian, we need your help.” Her face became more frightened, and I looked at Pierce, winding up and throwing another curse at Ku’Sox. Okay, the man not only knew what he was doing, but he looked good doing it.
Pierce followed the first charm with a second, scoring on the demon when Ku’Sox didn’t see the one hidden behind it. A black sticky something coated Ku’Sox, and the demon dropped the dead woman to claw his way out of the green aura covering him.
“A casting,” I said, watching Pierce flick his hair back as he caught his breath. “We have to do a casting. I doubt it will kill him, but he might go somewhere else to lick his wounds. Pierce?”
His gaze never leaving the demon, Pierce raised his hand in acknowledgment.
My heart gave a hard pound. Ivy. She’d be safe, but she’d have to stay with me.
“That’s—” Vivian began to say, starting to look aghast again, and I wondered what it was going to take to convince her.
“Casting isn’t illegal,” I interrupted her. “Just the curse. And I’ll twist it, not you.”
“Down!” Pierce yelled, and I dropped, yanking Vivian with me and snapping a protection circle over us. A red-tinted ball of death exploded behind us, and the smoke alarm started going off. Outside, I could hear sirens. “We need a decision here!” Ivy said, looking shaken.
“I can’t do a black curse!” Vivian babbled, the last of the professional young woman dropping away as she pushed her hair out of her eyes. “I’m coven!”
“Bloody hell paste!” Ku’Sox was shouting, still not altogether out of Pierce’s last spell.
“All you need to do is hold the inner protection circle against all creation,” Pierce said, his blue eyes sharp with an old anger at the reluctance of uptight women. “You don’t need to sully yourself—we’ll do that.”
I dropped my bubble so Pierce could join us, and he took a symbolic step forward. He knew the spell I wanted to use. “My outer circle won’t hold him long. Pierce, you’ll have to be quick in the casting. If he breaks it, the curse will incinerate half of Vegas.”
Ivy looked scared. “Get it right, witches.”
“’Scuse me,” Pierce said with a grunt, throwing another ball of goo at Ku’Sox.
This time, Ku’Sox absorbed it, the black mass dissolving in a cascade of sparkles. He had mastered the countercurse. We had to work fast. “I’m of a mind to see if you’re as grand as you think you are,” Pierce said to me, and I smirked back.
“Same here,” I said, exhilarated even as I was scared to death. “Okay! Let’s do this!”
“Look out!” Vivian shouted, and I jerked as Ku’Sox backhanded Pierce into Ivy. They slid across the floor in a tangle of arms and legs, the spell that Pierce had begun fizzling in a sparkle of green and red. Crap! When had he gotten that close?
“Hey!” I shouted as Ku’Sox wrapped an arm around my neck and started dragging me away. I struggled, trying to break his hold as he headed for the door. Shit, shit, shit! I could still make the outer protection circle, but I wasn’t ready to sacrifice myself to get rid of Ku’Sox. But then I remembered him tearing that woman’s throat out and her silent screams as she tried to breathe. Burning would be better than that. I think.
“You have the nicest hair,” Ku’Sox said as he yanked me up and I felt him touch behind my ear. I stiffened when he ran his nose down my neck, and my breath sucked in as he found the vamp toxins sunk deep in my tissues. “Ohhh, you’re flawed,” he murmured. “How delightful.”
“Oh shit,” I whispered, scrambling for anything to slow us down.
“Shit,” Ku’Sox said speculatively, and he loosened his grip until my heels dragged on the floor again. “I’ve heard that several times now. Is that the word of choice? I do so like all-encompassing words. Verb, adjective, noun. Yes, you are shitted.”
My heels thumped as he dragged me backward. “You’d better let me go!” I cried, reaching out to
grab a post. Ku’Sox yanked me off it, pulling me another foot until I snagged a table. I wouldn’t let go, and the added weight slowed him down even more. We were almost to the door, and I could hear radio chatter and yelling people in the street.
“You know why my brethren didn’t kill me?” Ku’Sox said as the table I was dragging hit a post and we stopped. “They couldn’t. Even Newt, and she tried. They made me special, the wonder child of the future, now our ignoble past, designed to bridge the gap between demons and witches and bring us back into the sun, able to walk in reality and the ever-after both, and all of us capable of holding as much energy as a female.” He hesitated, yanking me until my grip slipped and we moved forward again. “You can understand why male demons might want to fix that unfair quirk of nature. I think I turned out quite nicely, don’t you?”
“You don’t look special to me,” I panted, seeing Pierce horrified and afraid to do anything. He was next to Vivian, and Ivy was at their feet. I have to get back to them.
“But I am,” Ku’Sox snarled, sounding almost unhappy. “You know why Newt killed her sisters? I told her to. Newt I could control, but the others? They were a danger and had to be killed. Females can hold more energy than males. They have to in order to hold a second independent field of energy inside them without absorbing it.”
That was interesting, and my thoughts went back to what Ku’Sox had said earlier about my holding Al’s energy, supplementing it. Had I been able to do it because I was female?
“Two souls in one body,” Ku’Sox said, shifting his hold on me and smacking my hand until it went numb. My grip slipped away, and he started forward again. “Two energy fields bound by one aura without the smaller being crushed or absorbed. That’s where babies come from, Rachel, not cabbage leaves. And once I got Newt to kill all her sisters, there was no one left to tell me no, especially when all I needed to do was slide into reality to escape. And then I find you. Natural born. Unknown possibilities. Stronger? Weaker? Let’s find out.”
Crap, we were almost to the door. “I’m all for finding out who’s stronger,” I said, and then I reached for the line I’d never fully released, demanding all that Vegas could give me.
Energy raced in, hot and electric, tasting of dust, sand, and lightning that beat on the desert floor, the power of the sun kept clean and unblemished, the sands storing it like a battery.
I pushed it out through my pores, teeth gritted. It didn’t hurt, but it burned like fire.
Howling, Ku’Sox flung me from him.
I arched through the air, grunting when I hit a table. I slid to the floor, hurting. Damn, it felt like my back was broken. “You’re right,” I slurred as I felt Ivy’s hands reach under my armpits and drag me back to Vivian and Pierce. “I can hold more than you.”
When I could focus again, I looked up to see Vivian, fear on her face for what she was about to do. Pierce took my hand, and I dampened the energy flowing through me so I wouldn’t fry them. Vivian took my other, and when Pierce grasped her free fingers, completing our circle, I took a deep breath, feeling the alien-ness of them with me.
“Fire in the hold,” I whispered, opening my mind and gathering both Pierce and Vivian into my thoughts, now realizing that I could, like a mother with twins. It was akin to sharing a spell, as we had done in my garden, but there would be no will but my own here. For an instant, their souls were mine—my strength was lent to them, and they didn’t know the difference, didn’t know that I directed them. Mine.
Vivian’s bubble snapped up around us, coated with my smut. I felt Pierce’s aura shift, melting with Vivian’s so his magic could pass through her bubble. My outer circle was next, encompassing most of the restaurant’s front room and a slice of the unseen back alley.
Ku’Sox ran for us, his clawed hand looking like a bird’s foot as he screamed and tried to break it, but Vivian’s will was supplemented by mine, and he couldn’t.
“Celero inanio!” The words ripped from Pierce’s throat, pushed by my will and his fear. I could feel Vivian’s despair and shame, but fear for her life burned in her. I felt Pierce’s pride, then wallowed in his shock when he realized I was holding him, holding them both.
In slow motion, I felt the lava ribbons of the curse snake out from Vivian’s bubble, moving like lightning as the energy darted to the edges of my containment bubble, snaking up the sides and running to the peak above us. As one, the six ribbons struck the apex. A flash of energy exploded from it, crisping everything in a burst of heat.
“I pay the price,” I whispered, gathering the rising smut to me as if it were a blanket. The black curse was mine. I deserved the price.
Pierce’s head was down, and Vivian was staring upward in amazement as more power than she knew existed spun through her. It wasn’t that the dark side was stronger, but that everything was the dark side. All magic was inherently wrong, and it was only us fooling ourselves that some of it was good, some of it was bad. Magic…just was.
And so it was only I who saw Ku’Sox’s face go white in the realization that I might be as strong as Newt, but not insane and therefore not easily twisted. The cloud of burning molecules drifted to him in slow motion, sparking from one to the next as fast as an electron can spin—and in a bare second before the air in his lungs turned to flame, he vanished, snarling in anger.
He was gone, and the air burned—empty of his flesh.
I closed my eyes, and the sound of glass breaking sliced through my disappointment. We had missed. Damn it, we had missed.
“God forgive us,” Vivian whispered.
The curse felt me weaken, and it broke upon itself, flashing upward and turning into real flame. With a snap, both my and Vivian’s bubbles collapsed. Hands pulled from mine in haste, and I dropped to my knees. Ivy caught me—her hands gentle with compassion, tender with hesitation.
I opened my eyes to find that the sound of breaking glass had been the lights. We were in the dark, lit only by real, honest fire, dancing at the ceiling. It grew even as I watched, the light becoming brighter, more dangerous. “The ceiling is on fire,” I whispered. “We should go.”
Disappointment made me slow, and Ivy helped me to my feet as the smoke detectors continued to scream and the water system clicked on. Ivy and I searched each other’s expression in the dim glow of the flames, the water mixing with her tears, shining in the come-and-go light from the fire. She knew by my expression that he’d gotten away, and yet she thought nothing less of me, either, for failing to kill him or because I’d tried in the first place. Evil witch, black demon.
“Let me help you,” she said, and I nodded, thinking she was beautiful inside.
“We-we…,” Vivian stammered, clearly in shock as the water misted down.
Pierce started for the kitchen, turning when he realized no one was following him. “Time to pull foot,” he said, yanking Vivian, not me.
“We…,” she tried again, slipping, but at least we were moving. The floor was charred, slick under my steps, unseen in the dark. The air was heavy, a weird mix of heat and moisture. I glanced toward the front, glad I couldn’t see the smoldering bodies of the people dead and left behind. I could smell them, though, and see the little puddles of wax burning on the tables still left standing.
“Kitchen,” I said, leaning heavily on Ivy, weary. Cops and firemen weren’t coming in, which meant they were going to count the building as a loss. As soon as the right people arrived, they were going to circle the place and let it burn. We should probably get out before then.
We hit the kitchen at a staggering run, Ivy grabbing a take-out bag in passing once we got past the arc of my circle that had contained the curse. I wasn’t sure if she was supporting me or if I was supporting her when we hit the kitchen’s service doors and a slice of harsh mercury lamplight from outside spilled in. My head came up as the air changed. It was still hot but now it had the stink of garbage. Ivy was first out, looking at Trent, waiting beside my mother’s car, before taking the three-foot jump to the lower
pavement and looking up at me.
Vivian sat down to slide off, leaving a long, wet mark glistening in the streetlight. Pierce hesitated only briefly before he jumped, hitting the ground in a soggy splat. Ivy’s hand was extended for me, and I took it, still shaky. Ku’Sox had left, sure, but now he knew I was a threat.
“We got the devil,” Pierce said, clearly in a good mood as we all limped for the car, just twenty feet ahead. It was running. Maybe Trent had learned something after all.
“You think Ku’Sox is dead?” I said as I stumbled beside Pierce. “I didn’t see a body in there. Did you see a body? Anyone see a body? I sure as hell didn’t!”
Pierce jerked to a stop, and Ivy left me with one hand on the car for support as she got in and slid to the driver’s seat, water dripping from her. Vivian dived into the back, yelling at us to get in.
“No one could survive that!” Pierce said, water flinging from him as he pointed at the burning building. I jumped when the city’s fire codes clicked into play, and the building-wide circle snapped into place to contain the fire. Thank God we were out of it. We had only moments before someone would come back here and find us. They might have been waiting for us to get out. Maybe.
“If killing that freak was that easy, don’t you think that the demons would have done it?” I said, feeling Ivy’s eyes on me. “He’s still alive,” I said as I slowly got in the car, numb.
He was alive, but I might know how to kill him now, and I dropped my eyes, ashamed to even be thinking it. It was said that Newt had killed her lovers by running a line through them. Obviously I could do the same. Otherwise why had Ku’Sox convinced Newt to kill the female demons that the elves had missed?
I looked at my hands, trying to see them shaking in the dim light. I had to talk to Newt. Great. Just friggin’ great. Maybe she’d think I was a demon and decide to kill me, too.
