I let out a shaky breath and pulled my hands back. Or, tried to. The current of power jerked them forward again, sending me so off balance I toppled toward the fire circle. I jerked back again. The heat of the real fire radiated against my thighs, far too hot and far too big. Still the mandala sucked at my power, insatiable.
My face prickled. I’d only ever wondered how to put magic into the mandala. I didn't think of learning to stop the draw. Panic brightened my senses. The mandala sucked at the turquoise fire inside me, the real fire swelling. It drew and drew, and I felt the core of magic in my chest lose its radiance.
Magical fire took its energy from the caster and, like real fire, it would keep going as long as there was fuel. Until I was totally empty.
God, I'd been such an idiot not to figure out tying off spells. I hadn't realized I needed to know it. What a stupid time to die, just when I’d shrugged off this last chain.
Flame licked at the inner rim of the campfire circle, sending thick black smoke into my face. I coughed, thrashing against the magic as I might an undertow.
…except I wouldn't thrash against an undertow. I'd learned better than that. To escape a riptide, you swam across the current, not against it. The same logic might not apply to magic, but direct fighting wasn't working. My thighs stung with heat, even through my jeans.
How the hell was I supposed to send my magic sideways? I squeezed my eyes shut and clamped my jaw, trying to picture what the Sorcerers did to launch their mandalas. Was it a sideways movement?
The memory of Gwydian blossomed into my mind—his kind blue eyes on my father even as he inscribed the complicated spell that would twist him into a monster. It had been a shock of magenta, palms flat to the mandala. Then a fist, a cut of the hand sideways, as if declaring a runner safe on home base.
I dispelled the memory, forced my fingers to curl into fists. Then, focusing every ounce of will, I slammed my arms sideways.
The draw cut. I toppled onto my flaccid backpack. The mandala vanished in a column of fire, jetting straight up, and didn't even pretend to look natural.
I stared, detachedly wondering what I would say if hikers came by. Or a park ranger. It wasn't a great idea to stick around and find out. Without me to feed it more and more power, the fire's white center faded to yellow-orange, then dark amber. Finally, it was little more than a smoldering outline of mandala in the fire-circle, pale gray ash already blowing into the air.
It almost didn't seem real, that pile of ash. Like I could reach out and dust it aside and the book would be there, staring back at me with all the spells I'd sought to erase. But it wasn't, and with it vanished any hope the Sorcerers had of retrieving those spells. Even if they got ahold of my sketchbook, the order of drawing was lost. It existed only in my memory.
They could kill me now, and still they wouldn't get it. No one would suffer under spelled slavery again, not under that mandala's power. My mother's death, while not even avenged, at least felt less meaningless now that the Hellhound spell had gone to its grave with her.
I stood. I felt... good. There was weariness and hunger, but not the marrow-draining exhaustion of transformation or panic-blasts. When I turned my focus inward, the magic hub glowed dully, as if someone had turned a dimmer switch down a few notches. In fact, I still had a large percent of what I'd started with.
It didn't seem like a lot, considering how many spells the Guild's Sorcerers cast at us, but they had the aid of metal, amplifying the currents.
Maybe I needed a piercing….
I shoved that idea aside the instant it occurred. There was no way I wanted to look like them. No piercings. No more tattoos. I would eat my bodyweight in food, even if I had to use the stash of money Morgan left me to supplement what I ate at Ruff Patch.
Because now that I'd started, now that I knew how to cast, nothing stopped me from using magic to fight back.
This thought kept my steps light on the hike back to the truck. When I accepted my drive-through burgers, I might have smiled at the girl in the window. I felt fierce, suddenly, even with the windows up and hot air blasting and ketchup sliding down my chin. The hound stirred in me, ready to howl at the moon.
I wasn’t quite happy; I was high. The thrill of accomplishment and rush of knowing I could do magic jumbled in with memories of Mom and imaginings of what she would say if she could see me. If she could know what I’d done.
I arrived on Erickson St. with an empty takeout bag, the last centimeter of a melted strawberry shake, and an empty backpack.
When I pulled up to the rescue, Jaesung and Krista were shoving gear into her SUV. The engine idled and the red taillights illuminated a long catch pole and a medical bag. Jaesung heaved his heavy orange backpack onto a seat. Why did they need climbing harnesses?
I parked across the street. Uneasiness tamped down my mood as I hopped out. I knew that alertness—the tension and efficiency of rapid movements and little talking. It was how my pack looked when we were about to unload people from a boat, and do it fast, before anyone with a badge noticed.
“What’s going on?” I asked. The plume of my breath joined Krista’s.
“We got a call,” she said. “Night rescue. There’s a dog out on the ice in Verena Lake.”
I stared at her, a collision of thoughts hitting me too fast to separate out.
“You don’t have to come,” she went on. “But it would be awesome if you did. They think the dog has a collar.”
The first coherent question staggered off my tongue. “There’s ice on the lake?”
Krista fixed me with a look of frustration. “Where do you think you are?”
“To be fair, it’s not totally frozen,” Jaesung said, coming around the SUV with a large steel-wire cage.
“Which just means it’s even more dangerous for the puppy, so can we go?” Krista said.
Jaesung glanced at me. “Good hike?” I nodded. “You coming?”
I thought of all the dog rescue had done for me and knew I could not refuse.
“Let’s go save a dog.”
Chapter Fourteen
"The hell?" Krista said. I crouched in the back of the SUV, the toe of my boot jammed into the socket where the rear seat had once been. At her words, I leaned between the front seats, peering out the windshield. Trees flashed by, tall pines crowding close and straight as soldiers, and beyond them, a full sheet of solid white.
A field? No, the way the ground sloped down to it along the sides was wrong, and it was mirror-flat.
"That can’t be right," Jaesung said. "The lake shouldn't be in full freeze till mid-month. I Googled it before we left."
Something in my gut lurched as we skirted the lake. Under the grin of the moon, all that ice glowed blue-white. It looked too peaceful to my Miami eyes.
We swung around the jut of trees and the major part of the lake opened before us, wide and featureless except for the center. A dog’s silhouette moved there, back lit by a slash of headlights from the far bank. I spotted a weird tinge of color, like someone had thrown glow sticks onto the ice.
We pulled into a dirt parking lot and right down the concrete boat ramp. Krista stopped inches from the ice and I toppled against the center console, gasping.
"Up and out, people," she said. I pushed myself back and clambered into the cold. Jaesung stepped down onto the ice, extracted a small pair of binoculars, and pressed them to his glasses. I climbed the angled concrete to where Krista was unloading the trunk.
"Is one of us going out there?"
"Not sure yet." She handed me a cage. "The ice is probably too thin. We didn’t even think it was frozen yet."
The hair on my neck stood on end. I set the cage on the ground and accepted the heavy backpack full of climbing gear, unsure whether it was instinct or cold shivering across my skin. I heaved the gear onto my shoulder and returned to Jaesung.
"What's the deal?"
He grunted and handed over the binoculars. "It's acting weird—keeps backing in either direction like i
t’s stuck, but I can't see anything. People on the other bank are trying to call him."
I held the binoculars to my eyes and scanned. A black and tan border collie bounced on its front paws, rushing forward and backing down. I refocused the lenses, trying to get a better look at the ice near its back paws. I gasped. Four tiny mandalas, which I had mistaken for glow sticks, created a circuit around the dog, keeping it in place.
"What?" Jaesung said. I pushed the binoculars back into his hands.
"It's paw's stuck." Forgetting I stood on ice, I turned. My foot slipped sideways, and I snatched at Jaesung for balance, catching myself on his forearms. His feet slid out just slightly, bracing. The backpack of climbing gear clanked to the concrete as he caught my elbows.
"Shit," I whispered. "I wasn't expecting that."
"Clearly," he said, holding me steady as I got my feet back under me. I glanced up, squinting at him.
"Figure skating?"
Air puffed from his mouth in a chuckle. "Nope."
"Your nose is too intact for hockey."
"Not hockey."
Krista skidded down the concrete incline, the capture pole in one hand. "The fire department's on its way, but it's taking care of something at Drury farm—some sort of crop fire."
“In this wet?” Jaesung said.
"Where's that?" I asked, suspicion mounting. Even without the mandalas on the ice, it was too warm for a frozen lake, too wet for a crop fire, and too conveniently bad for us. This was not a job meant for the fire department. It was meant to draw me out, and it had.
Krista winced. "Not close enough—they've only got three engines and they're all there."
Jaesung was peering through the binoculars again, his mouth set in the grimace people sometimes do when they're squinting. He tensed.
"No," he said. "No, no, you idiot." Then he lowered the binoculars and waved a hand. "Go back!" he shouted. "Don't go out—fuck!"
Krista and I followed his line of vision to see a figure on the far bank step out onto the ice. The boy in the red jacket inched toward the dog.
Jaesung snatched up the bag of gear, pulling out lengths of cord, a clanking harness, and a half dozen carabiners. He handed me the cord and nodded to the SUV’s grill. "Can you tie knots?"
Without responding, I made my way around the front of the car, careful not to slip. The hood was hot and smelled like oil and exhaust, but I suffered it and secured the line with a quick anchoring hitch.
Krista hunched over a first aid kit, her phone cradled between shoulder and ear. "Yes, there's a boy on the ice at Verena Lake. I don't know. Yes, we're on the far bank. Uhuh. Ruff-Patch Dog Rescue. Kristina Howell."
I made my way back to Jaesung, sorting out the straps of the harness with his feet still braced wide. He'd taken off his right glove, and it dangled from his teeth. I took it and shoved it in his coat pocket.
"I should have done this in the car," he said. "Damn." He looked to the lake, where the boy had almost reached the collie.
Then a sound like a gunshot bounced off the ring of trees. I ducked, but Jaesung went still. It took only a second to realize it hadn't been a gunshot. A crackle followed, and the boy on the ice froze. The mandala at the edge of his shoe flared.
The collie barked and the boy's arms pinwheeled. Then, with a desperate flail, he shot beneath the ice.
Krista screamed, and on the far bank, people shouted.
The harness clinked next to me as Jaesung slung it on, ignoring the loops meant for his legs. He clipped it across his chest.
"Jae, no!" Krista said, skidding down and grabbing the harness. "Rescue workers are coming."
He turned, breaking her grip, and his eyes flashed hot behind his lenses. "He went under! Probably inhaled water from cold shock—he’ll drown before they get here."
My gut plummeted. This was my fault—Guild machinations, trying to draw me out. They probably hadn’t intended for a civilian to get hurt, but if he did, that was on me too.
Krista grabbed Jaesung’s jacket. "Don't let your rescue complex get rid of your common sense. You can't swim!”
I looked at the end of the rope in my hand. "I can.”
Before they could react, I dashed out across the ice. My feet slid, and it took two spills onto my hands before I stayed there, crawling like I was in hound form.
Krista shouted behind me, and the people across the bank shouted too, but I didn’t look at them. It had already been half a minute. Accident or not, I wouldn't let someone else die because the Guild was after me.
I got to the near edge of the collie's mandala-created cage. The dog was ballistic, barking at the opening in the ice after his master. There was no sign of him bobbing up from the slushy hole.
I pulled myself to the edge. It was sturdy and thick, even where the cracks had formed. Plenty thick to hold that boy's weight, if I were to guess. The chunks in the water, however, had gone to slush faster than it took a cube of ice to melt in Miami. That spelled out events well enough.
The ice had been frozen by magic, the break intentional and meant for me. Or one of my friends. The call to Ruff Patch had to have been one of the Guild Sorcerers baiting the hook. Maybe civilians weren’t so safe from them.
I tugged off my boots and jacket. Cold air cut through my sweater and my jeans were already damp from sliding across the ice. I looped the cord and tied it, reeling in slack until it tugged tight against its anchor on the SUV.
Hesitation only wasted time. I took a deep breath, held my nose, and slid feet first into the water.
Before, I hadn't known what Jaesung meant by cold shock. Now I found out. I caught myself halfway in, keeping my head above water as my body seized up. Every organ stopped its work and shrank from the cold. All except my lungs, which expanded in shallow bursts, my stomach jumping in time, completely out of my control.
Dizziness overcame me. I clung to the ice's edge. The cold burned worse than my mandala fire. I wanted to climb out. I wanted to make it stop. But someone on shore was screaming. I glanced up. A girl a little younger than me clutched her jacket against her chest, looking sick. His girlfriend? Sister? Friend?
I thought of Morgan, possibly twisted and dead, and dived.
Cold filled my ears, my nose, shuddered again at my lungs, but my eyes were the worst. They stung at the chill water, closing involuntarily. I forced them open in a squint, shuddering deep in my body as I spun, looking for a bobbing shape.
There, fifteen feet away, a dark silhouette drifted against the ice.
I heaved myself into motion, though my limbs came over stiff and uncooperative. The cold had set in faster than I'd thought. I kicked harder, moving through eddies of painful chill until he was in reach. I stretched out numb fingers.
The line pulled up short under my arms, jerking me back.
No. No, no, no—I was right there! I struggled at the end of the line, which drew back hard, reeling me toward the hole. Air bubbled from my nose and lips, but I got one arm through the loop, then the other. I twisted, feeling the scrape of it over my forehead as it sprang loose and slithered away.
It took only a few more seconds to swim back, toss an arm around the boy's chest. My lungs pulsed, begging for air. I could hold my breath for far longer, but something about the cold and the urgency…. I found the bright hole in the ice and headed for it.
When I broke the surface of the water, a metal ladder stretched above me. I tossed my free hand toward it but slipped off and plunged back under. With all my strength, I kicked, bursting through the slush. I cast my arm blindly. An elbow hooked around the rung, and I halted, holding onto the boy’s jacket, thoughts fracturing like frost.
My ears rang with shouts; crystals hardened on my lashes. How the fuck did it get so cold so fast?
"Th-the rope," I managed, but it was barely a whisper. I couldn’t get the breath to shout. I gulped in air and tried again. "I’ve g-got him! Give me the rope!"
Something slapped the slush next to me—the line! I had to release the ladder
to get it around the boy. I fumbled. My legs felt like they'd been shot up with Novocain, and my legs refused to kick as hard or fast as before. At last, I tugged his arm through the loop. "Pull!"
The rope went taut. I did my best to help boost him over the lip of the ice. He slid out, making a shiny trail of wet behind him. I grasped the ladder and clung, finally aware of the collie still barking next to me.
"It's okay," I wheezed, reaching for the mandala. It zapped at me, but the magic arced away, forking down to the ice instead. "Fuck you too," I said to the unseen Sorcerer. Then I closed my eyes, reached for the magic in my trembling chest, and drew it out, shoving power into the mandala the way the Enforcer had done with my enslavement tattoo.
Anger fueled me, and it was only a second before the mandala glowed turquoise. I dragged numb fingers into a fist, cut sideways. The mandala flared, leaving a carved shape behind. I reached out, drew a line across the mandala with my own power, and interrupted the circuit.
It shattered, spraying sparks into the air.
The collie bounded forward to the ladder and barked at me. I reached for its collar, but let go as the weight of my body almost drew it over the edge. There wasn’t enough traction for a dog of that size to pull me out.
"Go on," I managed, waving a hand at the dog. It turned and, with one last bark, bounded after the shining trail left behind by its master.
"Stay where you are," a voice commanded. I looked down the ladder. The man holding the end had sharp cheekbones and a strong, square jaw, but his face was hollowed out, no flesh between skin and bone. A trio of eyebrow rings caught the light, and when he grinned, a set of silver grills flashed back at me—each tooth a tiny headstone in his mouth.
Sorcerer. He had to be, but something was off about him. The shape of the mandalas on the backs of his hands were all wrong. He had the piercings, the tattoos, the emaciated frame, but not that self-righteous spit-shine most Guild members had.
That meant one of two things: he was either a bounty hunter hired to bring me in or a rogue sanguimancer, capitalizing on a potential power-source.
Unleash (Spellhounds Book 1) Page 12
