by Anna Abner
No. Somehow, they would stop the gate from destroying the world. He had to believe that or he may as well pack his bags and book a return flight for the western frontier.
“Good.” Derek picked up speed. “Then we’re not as screwed as I first thought.”
He stopped fast in the middle of the dirt road and slid several yards onto an embankment.
With one hand on the door handle, his turned on Jessa, desperation making him bold. “Stay with me,” he said.
Splitting focus between her and Paul was sloppy. He had to be sure she would make it out okay, no matter what happened.
“I promise.”
He opened the door and climbed out with his eyes on the dome in his former front yard. It was a shimmery, glassy-surfaced force field locking the Raleigh coven and their spirits inside like an overturned cereal bowl imprisoning a nest of spiders. From across the yard, the cabal’s black magic torpedoes crossed right through the barrier.
“You remember the shield spell?” he asked.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll use it first chance I get.”
“Stay low,” Derek warned Jessa. “We’re going inside.”
“Esmeralda is counting on us.” She smiled sadly. “We have to find her before they hurt her again.”
“We will,” he said. Kill the Dark Caster and rescue Esmeralda, all in one afternoon? Derek had his doubts, but he didn’t voice them. “And Jolie?”
“You don’t have to ask me twice,” Jolie assured.
A tingling in his extremities blossomed into a full-blown magical surge. Taking Jessa’s hand, he jogged for the rear of the dome. Though he suspected the cabal knew he and the girls had arrived, he still didn’t want to draw any more of their attention.
“Tego,” he cast, protecting himself and both females.
No one from the Raleigh coven noticed their approach. They were a desperate bunch, and as a blinding flash of lightning revealed the casters, he understood why.
Holden lay curled on his side in the swampy grass, the victim of a nightmare spell, the cruel glyphs floating around his head like neon tweety birds. Further away, David Wilkes was in the same pathetic state. Beyond him, through the howling wind, Derek recognized Cole, Talia, and some of Willow’s necromancers all forcibly sleeping through their own hellish nightmares.
Derek ran into the wind, vainly trying to shield his eyes from the stinging rain. Water soaked through his clothes, and his slacks stuck to his legs, tripping him up.
All the way across the dome, at the very edge, Willow and Daniela banged their hands against the shimmery obstruction, but they weren’t casting magic. As Derek got within reach, he saw neither witch had gone unscathed. Willow had black webs around her throat. A voice-binding spell. Daniela had the same black webs up both arms to the elbows.
“We need casters to break the dome,” he shouted at the two women as he ran. “We need to wake up the people on the ground.”
Jessa doubled over trying to catch her breath. “Why aren’t you channeling into Holden?” she demanded.
Neither witch reacted to their sudden appearance. Derek got in Daniela’s face. “Can you hear us? They’re going to kill someone and open the gate. Now, wake Holden up!”
Wild, crazed eyes zeroed in on him. “They bound my magic!” She shoved him hard, forcing him off balance. “David’s in pain, and I can’t do anything about it, so shut the hell up!”
“Derek, we have to wake them up,” Jessa exclaimed.
He swiveled, trying desperately to find a caster ready to do battle, to find any way out of this trap.
He sprinted for Holden first. “I can fix this, but I need you to get up and be ready to fight,” he said, dropping to his knees.
Jolie’s magic seared out of him and into the other man. One by one, the glyphs around his head blinked off.
Holden opened his eyes, but his slack expression didn’t alter.
Derek couldn’t sit around and wait for him to rouse, so he left Jessa at Holden’s side and zigzagged to David then Cole, Talia, and the final two necromancers, breaking nightmare spell after nightmare spell until he was panting from the pain.
Derek circled back to Holden. “Get up,” he snapped. “You’re supposed to be the hero, remember?” He couldn’t keep the sarcasm from his voice, no matter how hard he tried.
Holden rocked gently back and forth, mumbling what sounded like, “Under the ice.”
“Snap out of it!”
“Derek!”
Daniela’s agonized cry stole his attention away from Holden. He clasped Jessa’s hand, and they met the frantic witch at the edge of the dome.
“Break the binding,” Daniela begged, one cursed hand mindlessly pounding the shimmery glass trapping them all.
“Both of you,” he agreed, waving Willow closer. “I’ll break both your spells at the same time.”
He cast, and the glyphs around his body burned. And not in a tingly sort of way. No, in a help-I’m-on-fire kind of way. The energy required to destroy so many dark spells was exhausting, and his strength flagged.
“I’m sorry you had to be a captive audience,” came a booming voice from the other side of the dome, “but I needed you all to witness this.”
The spirit power in Derek faded, and they all pivoted as Paul emerged from the house followed by Beatrice dragging a bloody Esmeralda. The woman struggled helplessly against the much stronger witch.
Jessa threw herself at the glassy surface. “No,” she shrieked. “Don’t do this!”
“Beatrice,” Daniela called helplessly as Willow screamed without making a sound. “Please!”
Derek began his spell again, even more desperate to free the witches from their binding spells before the cabal could finish their sacrifice. “Libero,” he chanted, but it was difficult to control the magic when he sensed what was coming and that there was nothing he or anyone else could do to stop it.
“Not her,” Jessa screamed. “Please!”
“I’ve admired this young woman’s fire,” Paul shouted over the storm, taking Esmeralda by the throat and pinning her back to his front. “You can all rest assured that she did absolutely nothing to deserve this fate.” He unsheathed a six-inch blade from his belt and positioned it above Esmeralda’s heart. Jessa screamed and pounded and screamed again.
Derek cast, power scorching through him. Willow’s binds broke first, but Daniela’s were layered in so much magic…spell upon spell upon spell.
“Her only mistake,” Paul said directly to Jessa, “was being your friend.”
“Now, Derek,” Daniela screeched. “God damn you, now.”
He pushed as hard as he was able, and the black webs up and down her arms shrank, but it wasn’t good enough.
The cabal chanted in unison, their voices echoing above the wind and rain.
Paul slammed the knife through Esmeralda’s chest. Not just once. But twice, and then he widened the wound. The girl was dead three times over before Derek could comprehend what had happened.
A portal rose from the earth, half in and half out of Derek’s house, and he knew why Paul had wanted the property so badly. By summoning a demon into Rebecca, Derek had permanently tainted the earth under his home with the darkest of black magics. It would cradle the Chaos Gate like a mother’s gentle arms.
The shadowy portal grew taller and taller, fifty feet or more into the air, an arch through which the demon realm twinkled.
“Libero,” Derek said one more time. The webs on Daniela’s arms disappeared completely, and her magic exploded out of her.
She went a little mad.
Daniela shrieked a cry not unlike a bird of prey as she turned white and rose in the air.
“Get down!” Derek dove for the grass, taking Jessa with him.
Daniela whirled, an out of control top, screeching and screeching, gaining momentum until her face and body were a frosty blur. Ice missiles flung off her waist like water droplets from a lawn sprinkler. But these were projectiles of solid ice.
They obliterated the glass dome, shattering it into ragged chunks. It collapsed.
Daniela ran out of steam. The missiles ceased firing. Her rotations slowed. Finally, her toes touched the wet ground, and then she slumped upon her bottom and sat there in the rain, hunched over her knees, crying quietly as her body returned to its normal color.
The wall came down and the cabal’s dark magic buffeted Derek back several steps. He cast a sleep spell, hoping to get lucky, but from behind shield spells of their own, his magic couldn’t touch them.
“Jolie,” he called. “I need you to get angry.” He pointed at the row of Paul’s nine remaining followers. “Knock them down, and keep them down so they can’t cast.”
“No problem,” Jolie said.
The earth under his feet quivered, and then an earthquake the magnitude of which he’d never experienced jerked the ground out from under him. Derek fell, but was rewarded by the sight of his enemies toppling like toy soldiers.
“Keep it up,” he shouted. “Don’t let them cast.” He pulled spirit power into himself as if he were a sponge. It exploded out of him with a single word. “Incendo.” Fire burst like a bomb upon the cabal.
But not ordinary fire. Magical fire couldn’t be put out with water. It could only be destroyed by smothering it. But in all the chaos, the cabal didn’t drop and roll. They burned.
Willow screamed, “No,” and threw a mound of earth over Beatrice, suffocating Derek’s flames, and saving the woman a fiery death. “Not her,” Willow said. “She’s one of mine.”
The ground beneath him bucked, knocking him sideways. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a figure rolling out the flames.
Soot and ash dripping down his face and blacking his once elegant clothes, Paul scrambled closer. “I don’t need magic to kill you,” he exclaimed, tackling Derek flat to his back. “You worthless turncoat.”
Derek threw a punch, but Paul slammed his head into the ground, knocking him senseless for a moment.
“I was so wrong about you.” Paul shoved him onto his belly and notched his forearm under Derek’s chin. “You aren’t anything special.” He pulled, hard.
Derek squirmed. Where were the witches? The necromancers? Where was his back up? He twisted to see better, to call out for help, but the coven were on all fours, fighting the earthquake and the symptoms of the cabal’s dark spells. Willow had her back to him as she dug her former friend out of a collapsed earthen shield.
Jessa searched wildly for a spell circle, and he was grateful she was at least attempting to help him, but she couldn’t find one. Screaming, she fell upon the ground and started making one by ripping out chunks of water-saturated sod.
She wasn’t going to be able to cast.
No one was going to save him.
For the briefest of moments, Derek thought he was finally getting what he deserved. He’d done terrible things in Paul’s name, and he was going to die for it.
“Just imagine your pretty girl Jessa,” Paul hissed in his ear, “licking the mud off my shoes tonight. Let that be the last thing you see before you die.”
Derek flailed. He reared back an elbow and drove it into Paul’s right flank. The other man winced, but didn’t loosen his grip on Derek’s throat. So, he hit him again. In the same spot. And again, harder. Paul twisted out of the way of the next blow, giving Derek just enough slack to fight free.
“Incendo,” he rasped, scrambling out of reach. “Incendo, you son of a bitch.”
Paul burst into flames, and though he tried to smother them, the spell was too strong, and within seconds, his body had been reduced to a human-shaped pile of ash.
Jolie’s tremors died down to a gentle roll. Gasping, Derek flopped onto his back and concentrated on forcing oxygen through his bruised and battered throat.
“Derek!” Jessa threw herself on top of him. “Can you breathe?”
His voice was a hoarse breath. “I’m okay.” For a moment, he simply held her, not caring about the water drenching him, or the cold, or the stench of burning flesh. He just held her tight.
But it didn’t take long for their predicament to come crashing back.
To his left, the dark cabal was nothing but a line of ash and soot, and as the rain pelted their remains, they soaked into the grass and were gone. To his right, the Raleigh coven knelt upon the ground as they fought their way out of nightmare spells and the aftereffects of the cabal’s curses.
No one seemed concerned about the Chaos Gate, open and filling with the dark shadows of demon spirits.
Willow was distracted with Beatrice, casting magic over her unconscious body, but Willow wasn’t a necromancer. She couldn’t close the gate. It was Holden’s moment in the spotlight.
“The gate is open,” Derek rasped, spinning to find the necromancers in tatters. There was no time to pick up the pieces of their plan. They just had to act. “Holden, you’re up.”
But Holden was catatonic in the grass.
“You bastard,” Derek ground out, shaking him. But he couldn’t blame Holden. Nightmare spells were evil business. The man needed more time. Time they didn’t have.
Derek glanced once more at the gate. Then he looked back at the coven. Daniela was sobbing. Willow was staring at the unconscious face of her former friend, mute and motionless.
He pulled Jessa close. “I love you,” he declared. “I’m so glad I came back and had this time with you.” He kissed her quickly and then ran, not giving her a chance to respond.
He headed straight for the arching Chaos Gate.
But the entrance wasn’t the front door. No, no, of course not. Derek ran through the living room, down the hallway, and into the master bedroom. The walk-in closet had a new glow about it. Sort of orange. Black wisps of smoke blew along the floor. A demon spirit whizzed past him, and Derek plunged ahead, crossing through the Chaos Gate and into hell.
Chapter Seventeen
Hell wasn’t what Derek had expected.
In fact, it was a rocky wasteland surrounded by jagged ebony peaks in the distance. The gate was on a small rise and beneath him shadowy figures slithered across the land. Murky shadows with blood red eyes and claws.
Hurricane Hadley, though, was a long way away, and he shivered in his soaking wet clothes and flooded galoshes.
“I’m here,” Jolie assured.
“I’m not planning on hanging around to do sightseeing.” He turned his back on the demonic hellscape and focused on the gate itself. “Let’s do this.”
I can’t do this. He dropped to his knees.
The spell was designed to work with an entire coven channeling their magic into a single necromancer. Derek didn’t have a coven.
The best he could do was fire his magic upon the gate, maybe slowing the release of demons through its portal, until either Holden took over or one of those devilish creatures behind him eviscerated him.
Needing all the help he could gather, Derek drew a quick spell circle in the reddish sand, adding four additional spell marks to help funnel all Jolie’s freakishly potent witch power through him and into the gate.
“Everything you’ve got,” he instructed. “And if something goes wonky in here, I want you to leave. Fast. Don’t look back, just go.”
He would not be responsible for two spirits’ destruction. He’d rather die behind the gate than watch the light sucked out of Jolie the way it had been sucked out of Robert.
Her response was to juice him up with a huge wave of power. He grit his teeth. “Discutio.” He focused all that raw, crackling spirit power up at the arch of the gate and pictured it shattering into an infinite number of shards. The gate burst into flames.
And then nothing.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he admitted. What was a shattering spell supposed to do? What did it look like? Never expecting him to be their savior, no one in the coven had explained the details to him.
A person burst through the gate and skidded to a stop a few feet away.
Derek leapt upright i
n surprise as Jessa threw her arms around his neck.
“No,” he said, pushing her toward the gate. Jessa couldn’t be there. She could be trapped. She could get hurt. “Go back.”
But she held her ground. “You didn’t leave me when things got scary,” she said, clenching his upper arms, “and I’m not abandoning you. Besides,” she said, a hint of a sad smile crossing her face, “I promised.”
A demon zipped past them and out the gate.
It took him only a moment to realize how significant her sacrifice was and to accept her help.
“Okay,” he said, sketching a second spell circle for her, “this is good. Because the shattering spell won’t work unless someone is channeling into me. Stand here.” He directed her into the second circle. “Jolie will send you power, and you focus it at me. I’ll cast the shattering spell and bring down the gate.”
“There’s no way out of here, is there?” she asked.
“It doesn’t look like it,” he agreed. If the coven had an exit strategy planned for Holden, he didn’t know what it was or how to trigger it for him and Jessa.
“There’s still time to leave,” he said, clearing his throat. Damn. His eyes burned. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Neither do you,” she countered.
Oh, yes he did. “I started this. I’m going to finish it.”
“And I’m not leaving without you.” Her expression softened. “This past week has been one of the best of my entire life. I just want you to know how happy you make me.”
“Same.” He nodded, and then wiped his traitorous eyes on his sleeve. “You ready to be heroes?”
“Ready.”
Jolie filled Jessa with spirit power, Jessa cried out and collapsed to the overheated earth.
“You can do this,” Derek shouted at her. “Get up, Jessa!”
“It hurts,” she gasped. Hearing the pain in her voice convinced Derek this was the worst decision he’d ever made. But his guilt was fleeting. Because if he didn’t close the gate then it wouldn’t be closed. Holden was out of commission. The entire coven was a wreck. They might get their shit together in the next hour, but how many demons would spill out of the gate while they did so?
