The Warrior

by Kay Camden

  I take the candles and matches out of the stash as well and slide the floor back into place. With the four candles in position—north, south, east, and west—I light them and sit in the middle. Then I dump the rosemary out on the floor and divide it four ways with a finger. No magic, I remind myself. This solitude is too precious after all those days on the road with those men, my constantly sweating palms, my prickly anxiety. I hate how it betrays me, how it makes me look to them. I’m not afraid, not in my conscious mind. Something deeper is on freak-out, and it’s completely irrational and uncontrollable and has nothing to do with me.

  My moth lands on my knee and folds its wings. Through it, I sense a movement below us. Through the floor? A sound, translated into something I can understand, and from what I can tell there’s a person moving around on the floor below us. There’s no immediacy though, no sense of threat. The candlelight dances, throwing tall shadows on the walls. I return to the four piles of rosemary. There has to be something I can do that technically isn’t magic, something that won’t alert the Moores. My moth flaps away, joining two more on the glass of the French doors.

  All four candles blow out as if by an imaginary wind I feel inside my skin instead of across it. Strange, since my four piles of rosemary have also scattered. I peer around the room looking for something I missed, a falling object that could’ve created a gust of air. But I felt no movement of air, nothing against me. I actively calm my heart. There’s no reason to panic. I reach for the matches to relight my candles when a small spot in the floor bursts into flame. Not just any spot, but Grandma Sloane’s carved symbol. The flame dies to a smolder, the outline of the bent triangle consumed by a different symbol glowing orange inside its circle: a symmetrical cross, intersecting in the exact center.

  Before I can recall this symbol from everything my dad taught me, I get a prod that powers the magic inside me—but it’s wrong, it’s not the magic I know. It’s flipped somehow, unrecognizable yet still strangely accessible. I have to shut it down or the Moores will know. Dillon will return, Jared too, and do … what? I turn away from the glowing symbol and wait for my eyes to adjust to the shadow of the room. The shadow that’s now animated. Alive.

  I crouch—instinct when faced with a surprise attack. Is that what this is? I glance upward but the ceiling has disappeared, replaced with heavy hanging smoke—no, a cloud, seething and rolling with anger and hate so palpable its presence is almost human. It dawns on me then: what I’ve felt in this house isn’t the lack of breath from the trees. It isn’t the hollow, stagnant air of an old mansion. It’s an accumulation of so much hatred it’s become a power source for a certain kind of magic I hope never to use. This house stores a pocket of fuel for black magic like none I could ever imagine. It seems to be collecting here as if drawn to me.

  Are the Moores sensitive to my use of any magic or just our native magic? Will they sense my use of black magic? Do they even know I’ve been trained in it?

  I scoot on my knees toward Grandma Sloane’s smoldering symbol a run a finger over its design to douse the glow. When I look up I’m captured by the image through the window: the full moon hanging high in the sky and the oak directly below it, its straight thick trunk in perfect alignment.

  With my palms against the floor strewn with rosemary, I bow my head and remember what Grandma Sloane told me so many times. When the moon aligns with the oak, a danger will come for you. I feel a miniscule vibration in the floor that mimics human footsteps. Unhurried but determined and growing more pronounced with each beat. There’s a pause, as if there were a door to be opened. I feel someone shut it then, near enough to be my door to the hall.

  I spin on my knees to face the sitting room door, my finger in my boot to loop my amulet’s chain and yank it free. One hand still against the floor, I feel another pause in the footsteps. The door to the room opens, sending the tower of books to the floor and the mirror spinning. Light from the sitting room spills toward me. In silhouette is a man—broad shoulders, shaved head. He regards the mess of books before he steps inside and closes the door behind him.

  As I stand I raise the amulet over my head and meet his gaze. Now with the moon’s light on him, I find he’s not quite a man. Maybe in height and muscle but not in the face. He’s young like me.

  He takes another step like he owns this room, like this whole mansion is his domain. His eyes don’t stray from me. Above him, the black cloud churns, gaining strength by the sick, hateful pleasure this meeting has lit in his face. My name forms on his lips, spoken so slowly I almost can’t make it out.

  Rex Moore, I want to say back, to name him like he’s named me, like an object put in its place. I could try but I don’t, not with the way he’s smiling at me now. He knows what I want to do, what I can’t do. I refuse to offer my deaf voice and give that gross smile any more power.

  With his forward step, I move to the right, forcing him left. I want the unlocked door to my back so it’s a possible escape I won’t have to get through him to reach. He’s in the full light of the moon now, and I see his nose has a dark line across the bridge like it’s been recently broken. With his build, he’d fit perfectly into the wrestling team at my school. His battle stance is hunkering and heavy, unlike the balance I strive to achieve on my feet. Where he needs to use his weight as a weapon, I need to move—and use his weight as a weapon against him.

  Another sideways step puts him into shadow, me in the moonlight. I catch a flash of teeth while he sizes me up. Along with the driving gaze it’s almost animalistic, but I know better. Only humans are capable of such dark personal hate. I’m tempted to smile back at him, but I know it would appear forced. I’m not letting him force me to do anything but kill him.

  His lips are moving but I can’t catch a thing until he points to my amulet, and I recognize one word: cheat. I realize I’m glowering at him too late to smooth my face so I just let it be. And he’s laughing, shaking his head, disgusted. The next words are obvious for how perfectly he directs them at me: Bevans can’t win without cheating.

  I rip the amulet over my head and toss it away. He straightens, taken aback, like his comment wasn’t meant to coerce me to get rid of the amulet. He actually believes that crap, and he’s surprised I took it off. Apparently he’s had some misinformation about Bevans.

  He strikes with snakelike speed and grizzly power. My defense is automatic, processed by the muscle-memory of a lifetime of training. I don’t think it; it just happens. A higher part of me sees the dance that it is, scrutinizing every move to make them faster, more powerful, more precise. My elbow smacks cheekbone—he’s not as tall as I thought he was if his face is that easy to reach. My own cheek erupts hot then cold—his retaliation I can’t believe I missed coming. I duck a second blow and rise fast to crack my skull against his chin. He deflects, using my off-balance to twist my arm and spin me against his solid plank of a body.

  I’m in a constrictor’s grip, both arms pinned, breathing in the musk of his soap and sweat as he tightens even more. And now he’s sliding a leg around one of mine, disabling all appendages but one. Struggling would only wear me out, so I wait. He’ll mess up. They always claim victory too soon, and that’s when I’ll get him. And all the energy he’s using to hold me is energy draining from him when mine is allowed a moment of rest. He tightens again, impossibly tight, but with that tiny motion his bicep has moved dangerously close to my mouth. All I need is a fraction of an inch. So I release all air from my lungs, giving him more grip and me an arm right where I want it.

  I turn my head and bite with everything I have, then I rip, tasting the hot metal of blood, feeling his bellow vibrate against my back. Nearly retching from the human flesh clamped between my teeth, I release him. I’ve gained enough room to drive an elbow into his ribs, and I fall to the floor and scramble out of his reach.

  A mutilated arm doesn’t slow his pursuit. He makes no notice of the gush of blood darkening his whole arm.
I get the couch between us, stopping when he does. He’s panting hard now, not due to exertion but rage. I make a show of wiping his blood off my mouth. This smile isn’t forced at all. He punches the arm of the couch so hard it shifts against me. A tickle runs down my cheek; I resist the urge to wipe away blood. My brow tingles with swelling setting in even though I don’t remember taking a hit there. He shoves the couch, sending me a step back. Then he hunkers down and pushes it until I’m forced to move aside or be slammed into the wall.

  I opt to leap on the bed instead of skirt by him; he follows me up and over. It’s a game of chase now, and I’m keeping my footfalls light to not attract attention. He’s not so thoughtful—I can feel the whole room quaking in reaction to his thudding. This has to stop before someone hears and comes to help. It won’t be me they’re helping.

  In the middle of the room I switch to offense. He grazes my jaw, which would’ve been a knockout had I not moved in time. He adds a blow to my knee and I’m down, but I use my other leg to sweep one of his. My knee rings with pain that’s hard to shut off. I shove away but not fast enough because he’s got a fistful of my shirt and he’s dragging me back. I let him pull me close and send an elbow into his gut and a knee between his legs.

  We’re both on the ground now. He’s snorting from that last blow, but he hasn’t released my shirt. I kick at his other arm but miss, and he somehow ends up on top of me, turning me over so my back’s against the floor. The mess of blood from his arm has made everything slippery. He’s too strong, and in this position I can’t use his weight against him. I have no range of motion for anything. Above him, the dark hateful cloud seethes, dipping down as if trying to taste us, to join us.

  I can’t control the reaction to squirm. My breath is being rolled out of me. He’s snaked both his legs around mine, pinned my left arm under me and the other above my head. If he moves his face closer, I can break that nose again with my forehead. He knows that and he’s staying far away.

  My arm underneath me goes cold, robbed of blood flow. The urge to cry out is hard to contain. He’s brought it just to the snapping point, one slight move and it will break. Why bother when he wants to kill me? Maybe he wants to separate me a piece at a time.

  Because I refuse to look into his eyes, I look past him into the dark cloud. Its sentience scares me as it acknowledges me and offers a test to see what I’m made of. To see how far I’ll take this. It’s hungry for more. It can’t just be happy with the hate he has for me, it wants me to hate him back.

  Well, I have a different idea.

  Rex presses his body even harder against mine to keep my arm underneath me without the aid of his own hand. Now with a free arm, he produces a short blade and turns his face toward me. His teeth are stained red. Can the deaf girl read lips?

  My response is to remain still, keep my eyes trained on his. He knows the answer is yes.

  Good. Then read this: find your voice. I want to hear you scream when I kill you.

  I close my eyes and reach far into the dark cloud. My connection with its power is instantaneous and true. A kinship so unexpected I’m gasping and choking for the force it awakens inside me. I’m trained in black magic but never has it felt so integrated, such a complement to my native magic. I’m split down the middle: one half Bevan, one half something else.

  Rex has freed my arm to take a handful of my hair and pull my head back. His blade rests against my throat. I drag my finger into the blood spilling from the bite wound on his arm and draw an encircled symmetrical cross on his forehead. He tries to pull back, but I’ve got my other arm now, and I’m holding him with the power I’ve drawn from the dark cloud, a fuel to my black magic. An enemy he’s not trained to fight.

  I dip my finger in his blood again and draw the same symbol on my forehead. His knife hand has gone to the floor to push away. I latch my hands behind his head and draw his forehead against mine.

  The collision is a white-hot discharge, sending an electric burst from my teeth to my toes—and through him, too, for how rigid he goes. In my mind everything is blinding white, but I keep my grip as he fights me. I’m like a stone cemented into the ground, my hands a vise. He’s spitting words, his breath hot on my lips. It must be curses for the power packed in them.

  Everything around me fades into something new. I’m enveloped by so many unfamiliar sensations I want to retreat, but I push further, reaching for something I can grasp. That scent of his musky soap isn’t just a random unnamed fragrance in my nose anymore. I know it like it’s part of my life because I’m inside his head. And I see what’s here—that same cloud hovering above us resides in him, only more compact. Coiled and tightly packed into a space not large enough to contain it. I feel his hate, his anger. I push further and find torment. Loneliness. Despair. Emotions I’ve felt in my life that are easy to recognize but hard to accept in this space for how concentrated they are. My loneliness has never been so bottomless, my despair never so profound. I can’t be in here and not do something about this mess. It’s not right. It’s not even human.

  So I pick at the mess like it’s a tangible thing. It breaks off in pieces I start to gather. They overflow my hands, so I fill my shirt like I used to with pebbles on the shore of the Black River as a little girl at home. So many pebbles. So many pieces. Different shapes and sizes, but I take them all in as a weight lies upon me. When I finally have them all, I pack them together and hold them close, a dark, tarry clump compacting in my hands. I can’t just drop it, so I draw it near me, into me, swallowing it down. Away.

  That weight lifts off, and I open my eyes. From inches away Rex looks back, the bloody symbol on his forehead smeared, his eyes so wide I can see the blue in them in the dim light.

  What did you do?

  It plays in my head as it forms on his lips as if tendrils of our mental connection are still in place. He slams a palm against the floor beside my head. I don’t flinch because I expected it. I reach for his face for a tactile sensation, hoping it will overwrite the mental and end this spell that holds us. He jerks back before I make contact because he expected that. Then he’s on his feet, crouching over me.

  What the fuck did you do?! Yelled with so much force his breath stirs my bangs.

  I shrug. I don’t know what I did.

  He makes a motion to grab me by the throat, but I don’t bother to move because I know he won’t go through with it. Realizing this himself, he punches the floor, and I do flinch for that—not for fear of being hit but a reflex from the busted knuckles he’s just experienced.

  I raise to my elbows and propel myself backward. I have to get away from him. This mental link is more than I bargained for and I want it gone. He sucks his knuckles, watching me. All that savage rage now gone, replaced by unmistakable confusion that has me wanting to explain what I don’t understand myself. I took something from him. It’s a hot coal in my throat, slowly slipping down. I place a hand against my chest where it is, just under my breastbone. And he continues to watch me, awaiting an explanation I can’t give.

  He turns quickly toward the door, mumbling words I can’t make out. Then he’s on his feet. For a moment I think he’s going to offer me a hand up, but that’s crazy, and he must think so too because he takes a step back to prevent it. He makes one last glance between me and the door to the hall then picks up the desk chair and hurls it through one of the French doors. Old glass rains everywhere. After using his boot to kick remaining shards free from the frame, he launches himself through and over the balcony, dropping out of sight.

  With the boundary spell already breached, and an oncoming threat he’s made apparent by his glance toward the hall and hasty escape, I snatch my amulet off the floor and follow. On the balcony, I pause to pull the straight razor out of my boot so it won’t get in the way of a hard sprint. I tug my elastic silver armband from my upper arm to my forearm, stretching it to its full width so I can tuck the razor inside. Then I hop the
railing, drop to the ground, and run. It’s a struggle to ignore my wounded knee, but I focus ahead of me. Rex reaches the woods and fades away. What I don’t understand is what he could possibly be running from.

  Chapter 4

  Rex

  I don’t stop running until I’m deep in the forest. They’ll send a search party as soon as they can gather enough guys, and I need to gain enough of a lead to figure out what the hell to do. One part of me thinks maybe they won’t find out, maybe their boundary spell was junk. Maybe they didn’t hear the breaking glass. They’ll stay inside, thinking Sloane Bevan and I are in our rooms asleep.

  I tell that part of me to shut the fuck up.

  As I catch my breath, ribbons of gray clouds lit sideways by the moon cruise across the sky. A breeze swells, swaying the creaky tree branches above me. When the air settles, I catch a far off sound: barking dogs. Okay, so not a human search party. They released the dogs. And I don’t know who they’re hunting—Sloane Bevan, or me.

  Underbrush stirs in front of me and there she is, materializing like she knew I was here. I take a step back and bump into a tree trunk—real smooth, genius. Bevans must be animals if they can move through the forest with such stealth. That’s an advantage she’ll have when the dogs get nearer, so I take off, hoping to get far ahead so when they bust her they’ll be satisfied and give up on me. I’ve always hated those dogs and they’ve always hated me. As soon as they catch my scent, they’re going to be fighting each other for the opportunity to dismember me.

  Passing an outcropping of rock, I snatch a fist-sized stone off the ground. Sloane Bevan caused all this. The next time she and I meet, I’m bashing in her skull.