Idols and Enemies (Amplifier 4)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  Ocean squinted at the moat, then crouched, her toes almost brushing the humming salt line. The glittering amorphous shape that was the Hallowed was pressed against the water’s edge, right across from the younger witch.

  “Stay back,” Sky hissed.

  Licks of what looked like fire shot through the entity’s collected energy. It had absorbed the sorcerers’ spell.

  My jaw dropped as the implications of that hit me.

  Ocean ignored her older sister, pointing a shaking hand toward the water barrier. “Is it … is it building a … bridge?”

  Isa and Khalid swiftly crouched on either side of the witch. Isa grimaced, then swore. Khalid clenched his fists, baring his teeth for a moment. Though what exact emotion he was fighting, I didn’t know. Then he glanced at Isa.

  His elder brother met his gaze. Some sort of silent communication passed between them, and finally, Isa nodded.

  Khalid looked over at Aiden, his gaze momentarily dropping to our still-entwined hands. “I’m going to need access to your armory.”

  “The safe’s open,” Aiden said. “I expect to see both of Ocean’s poisons in it when I lock it back up.”

  The middle Azar brother rose without another word, striding off toward the house.

  “You think he’d try to steal the poison?” I asked. “Now?”

  “No,” Aiden said. “I think he might try to use it, if necessary. And I don’t want a drop of it on your … our land.”

  The energy that was the Hallowed thinned to cross over the water at one specific point, rapidly amassing on the other side of the trench.

  Isa hissed.

  Grosvenor clenched his hands to fists, leaning forward slightly as the Hallowed came up against the first of his contributions to the containment spells — a cluster of wooden tiles. The curse breaker’s spell held it at bay.

  “If the Hallowed breeches the salt line …” I began.

  “No,” Aiden said. Bluntly, harshly. He dropped my hand and tugged his notebook out of his back pocket, flipping it open to a blank page.

  “You don’t even know what I was going to suggest,” I said quietly.

  He shook his head. “I’m not having this conversation.”

  “Aiden …” I was getting annoyed.

  “No.” He pulled a pen out of his pocket and started drawing a rune in his notebook. No doubt something that would explode, given his tone.

  “You can see that it appears to be absorbing the magic.” I crossed my arms — then dropped them when I realized what I was doing. “Like I can.”

  Aiden shook his head, still not looking at me.

  Kader stepped closer. The elder sorcerer’s gaze was riveted to the Hallowed as it amassed itself up against one of the curse breaker’s piles of wooden tiles. “It’s learning.”

  “You aren’t part of this conversation,” Aiden snapped.

  “Well, apparently neither is Emma.” Kader smirked at his son. Though only briefly.

  One of the wooden tiles started to shift out of alignment. I actually stepped forward in disbelief, thinking I was seeing things. The Hallowed had turned the water against Grosvenor’s spell. It had somehow formed the liquid into a long finger and was slowly inching it forward, pushing the tile.

  “It used the fire against the water,” I whispered. I had seen the flames licking through its iridescent body.

  “Yes.” Aiden’s hands had dropped to his sides. He shook his head. “It broke the pentagram with power taken from you. From all of us, perhaps.” He spoke as if not realizing he was talking out loud.

  “Smothering the fire with the remnants of the barrier spell,” Kader said. “Then harnessing the fire to bridge the water …”

  Something snapped as the Hallowed flipped the tile completely out of alignment. It tumbled across the grass and came to rest against the salt line.

  “Grosvenor’s magic is complicated,” I said, already anticipating the Hallowed’s next move. “It will take it time to learn a pattern to break the witches’ final containment spell.” I turned to Aiden. “You can’t fight it. Not even if I amplified all of you.”

  “Emma …” he growled.

  “It’s going to grab one of us,” I said, surprised to hear my voice sharpening with fear. I shoved the useless emotion away. “We secure Ocean, Sky, Grover, and Khalid in the house, behind the wards.”

  “No,” Aiden repeated, actual anger laced through his frustration now. “Absolutely not.”

  “The entity won’t be able to get through the wards.”

  “If you let it have you, it will be able to do whatever the hell it wants,” Aiden snarled.

  My heart rate ratcheted up. I didn’t want to suggest what I was about to suggest, but I really didn’t see any other way. I pressed my hand to Aiden’s chest. “You can do this,” I whispered. “You knock me out —”

  “No, Emma —”

  “Yes. You get me in the pentagram.”

  “I can’t hold you there!”

  “You can for long enough. Just … keep me knocked out. Long enough to get the other four.”

  Aiden closed the space between us. Anger was etched across his face, his voice a low growl. “Apparently, you’ve forgotten that one of you is missing right now!”

  “I can do this,” I insisted — hearing the lie in my voice even as I said the words. I pushed past it. “I’m already resistant to it. And that’ll become immunity. It can only grow.”

  “I can’t,” Aiden said. “End of discussion.”

  Kader cleared his throat. “I disagree.”

  Aiden turned a vicious look on his father.

  Kader held up a placating hand. “It can’t be Emma, I agree. Even if the rest of the Five were on site, it would still be utterly foolish to sacrifice her.”

  Aiden snarled something nasty under his breath. It carried magic that shivered across my collarbone and neck, though likely not intentionally.

  “But …” Kader trailed off as all of us turned to watch the Hallowed dismantle the rest of Grosvenor’s spells, gathering them all at the edge of the salt line. “We do need to move it. So we need a new vessel. One that we can, as Emma put it, knock out and drop into the pentagram.”

  “Who would you suggest, Father?” Aiden said sarcastically.

  Kader turned and glanced over his shoulder, looking at Cerise prone in the grass. “It’s a Myers’ coven problem. The idol was in their care. Their guardianship. We let the one responsible deal with it.”

  Chapter 11

  I removed myself almost immediately from the argument that started between Kader, Aiden, Isa, Ocean, and Sky over Kader’s pronouncement. None of them had any apparent interest in listening to anyone but themselves, and I was tired of being ignored. Instead, I stood at the edge of the final boundary line, watching as the Hallowed remained stymied by the witches’ magically imbued salt.

  The entity was now an amorphous blob of energy, shot through with various shades of blue magic. It was shifting Grosvenor’s wooden tiles around and around, as if trying to find a sequence to break through the barrier. The curse breaker crouched beside me, gaze riveted to the shifting tiles.

  Khalid was slightly behind me and farther to my left. When he’d returned from raiding Aiden’s safe in the study, I had amplified him on request. Now, between that amplification and the amount of magic the sorcerer was carrying, he practically hummed with power. His hands hung at his sides, his long, scarred fingers flicking and gesturing. No doubt running through the arsenal of spells he planned to use against the Hallowed if it came to that.

  All three of us were actively tuning out the still-ongoing argument. Sky was doing most of the talking for the witches, Ocean tucked behind her sister, arms protectively crossed over her chest.

  Cerise was still prone in the grass, still unconscious.

  “Could you break the salt circle?” Khalid asked in a low murmur. He was speaking to Grosvenor.

  The curse breaker glanced toward the group clumped aggressively together
to our far right. Sky and Isa stood practically nose to nose now, the witch’s expression fierce. Her light-blue eyes were glowing, the sorcerer’s expression filled with disdain.

  “Yes,” Grosvenor finally said. “But I’d need another tile.”

  That got my attention. “One you didn’t use to fortify the containment spell?”

  “Well, I wasn’t trying to break anything then, was I?” he muttered peevishly.

  I ignored him, returning my attention to the entity as it shifted the rune-marked tiles again. “So it might not break through?”

  “It’s going to break through,” Khalid snarled quietly.

  Grosvenor nodded. “Just not the same way I would. But Sky and Ocean put everything they had left into …” His voice trailed off as his shoulders shifted, his gaze riveted on the collection of tiles that the Hallowed had just arranged at the inner edge of the salt circle.

  Khalid leaned closer. He blinked and swore, then pulled a short blade out of his suit jacket pocket — courtesy of an expansion spell, presumably. The wide platinum blade was single edged and inlaid with gold runes. The sorcerer stepped away, then began moving the blade through a series of complicated swoops, twists, and jabs. As he did so, the runes on the knife began to glow, and the hum of energy surrounding the sorcerer expanded.

  “We’ve got less than five minutes.” Grosvenor directed the statement to the group still arguing toe to toe, raising his voice to be heard.

  They all paused, taking a collective breath. Aiden’s gaze settled on me, anger etched across the beautiful planes of his face. Fiercely sexy.

  I grinned at him, then winked.

  He blinked.

  I was pretty sure that was the first time I’d ever winked at anyone. My grin widened. Apparently, standing on the precipice of letting an unknown entity possess me for the second time, I was feeling playful.

  Aiden narrowed his eyes at me. Then he shook his head, emphatically. ‘No.’

  I laughed quietly. It was adorable that he thought he could order me around.

  The dark-haired sorcerer smiled then, but it was a tense, terribly pained expression. As if looking at me hurt him.

  And suddenly I wasn’t feeling so playful.

  Isa tried to step around Sky. She jumped in front of him, fingers outstretched before her. Protecting her mother from the sorcerer.

  I looked away from Aiden, back to the salted circle — into which the entity had managed to dig a long notch. It was breaking through.

  “No, you make me move.” Sky’s voice caught my attention. She was firmly in Isa’s face.

  “I will,” Isa said. “If you leave me no other choice.”

  “The Hallowed won’t take Cerise,” I said. Again. I’d tried getting that point across to them at least three times before I’d given up. I loathed repeating myself, and the Azar sorcerers were seriously testing my patience.

  But it didn’t really matter.

  When I had positioned myself by the final barrier, the Hallowed had immediately keyed in on me, building its spell less than a hand’s width away. So when it finally broke through the salt line, it would come for me before any of the others. I would fight it — but only as much as I had to in order to stop it from using me to kill everyone else.

  And then Aiden wouldn’t have any argument left.

  I realized no one else was speaking. They were listening to me, finally. I kept my attention on the entity as it further hollowed out the niche it was digging into the salt. “Not only have I drained the witch …”

  “Rather thoroughly,” Khalid interrupted, stepping up to take his place beside Grosvenor again.

  I ignored the disgruntled sorcerer. “But it had already decided Cerise wasn’t powerful enough for it to fully manifest through. That’s why it focused on Kader.” I’d pieced together the Hallowed’s desires, from when it was trying to merge with me. And not just desires. A simple knowing. An understanding.

  Those thoughts, those intentions, had been in my own head. I could still feel what I’d felt when it —

  “How do you know?” Aiden asked quietly, his voice cutting through my own thoughts. “Can you communicate with it, Emma?”

  I shook my head. “Not now. But … before, yes. It wanted Kader. It must have gleaned your father’s existence through Cerise, along with her sense of the power of the sorcerer Azar.” I’d intended that title to be sarcastic as I said it, but I didn’t pull it off at all.

  Kader actually was that powerful.

  “And then it homed in on you,” Aiden said. “Emma —”

  “It has to be me,” Ocean whispered, interrupting her brother. Speaking to the ground rather than any of us.

  Sky flinched, then clenched her hands into fists and whirled on her sister.

  “You all already know it,” Ocean said, firming her voice and her stance, speaking over Sky’s unvoiced protest. “I’m the least dangerous among all of you. I’m the … the … easiest to kill, if it becomes necessary.”

  Ocean’s terrible offer to sacrifice herself hung between all of us, none of us wanting to acknowledge the truth of it. Or how ridiculously idiotic it was.

  “Yes,” Kader said, nodding.

  Right. The elder sorcerer wasn’t one to conceal anything that advanced his objective. Not that I knew what his current plan was. Or if he had one at all.

  “What?!” Aiden roared.

  Isa opened his mouth, responding in a torrent of that Arabic language the Azars spoke. Aiden and Kader responded in kind, power churning around the three of them. Such similar tenors of magic, but Aiden’s power sang the brightest for me.

  I had to get him out of the clearing before the Hallowed broke through the salt line. He would be too much of a temptation. For both of us.

  “Amplifier,” Khalid said, quietly enough that it was doubtful that anyone but myself and Grosvenor could hear him. “Please step back.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I snapped at the sorcerer without looking at him, my gaze still on the witches. Sky had her hands on Ocean’s shoulders, presumably trying to hug her, but the younger sister was standing her ground and attempting to argue — in French now.

  Aiden would retreat from the Hallowed only if he had someone to protect while doing so. His sisters.

  “We need to do this,” Grosvenor growled. “Now.”

  The curse breaker started placing tiles between my feet and the salt line. The extent of the salt holding the Hallowed back was the width of my thumb now, thinning more as I watched.

  “You can’t leave,” Khalid said. “It has obviously keyed on you. And it’s obvious that you can take multiple hard hits and not go down, so you’ll be bait.”

  I’d never been bait in my entire life. I wasn’t even the trap. I was the killing blow. The final —

  I shook off the inappropriate flush of arrogant indignation and took a single step backward in the grass, silently agreeing to their as yet unarticulated plan. Grosvenor instantly started placing rune-marked tiles in the space I’d vacated. “The entity got through the curse breaker’s last boundary spell.”

  “This isn’t a boundary,” Khalid said quietly. “It’s a snare.” The width of the curse breaker’s tiled spell stretched slightly wider than the doorway the Hallowed was in the process of carving into the salt line. “You draw it to you. Grosvenor holds it.”

  “And you try to hack it into pieces?” I eyed the blade he held at his side. “If it could be killed, why would the witches tuck it away in the idol?”

  Khalid smirked. “Objects of great power get stored for later use and then are lost, amplifier.”

  “We’re not going to kill it,” Grosvenor said. “We’re going to hold it just long enough to get it into the permanent pentagram. Same plan, just with a slight twist. Less risk.”

  “Is this Aiden’s plan?” I asked. I hadn’t noticed the three of them talking, but I had obviously missed something.

  Grosvenor began on a third line of tiles, adding only three this time. Then tw
o more. At first glance, his spell work was constructed in a similar fashion to a game of dominos. Except he connected symbols according to what he was building, rather than simply going by visual matches.

  The salt line set between his haphazard rectangle of tiles and the Hallowed was the width of a pencil now.

  “No. Isa’s plan,” Khalid said. “With Cerise as the backup.”

  Isa and Kader were still in intense discussion, though they had lowered their voices. But Aiden was watching us. Watching me.

  Then he looked at the circle, checking the Hallowed’s progress. His eyes widened. He clamped a hand on Isa’s shoulder.

  I turned toward Khalid fully, so that Aiden couldn’t read my lips. “What have you got on you that will take me down?”

  He gazed at me for a moment, then grimaced. “Nothing that won’t hurt. Something of my own design, so it won’t just bounce off you.”

  I nodded. Then I pressed the side of my foot against Grosvenor’s hip. The curse breaker was still fiddling with his spell. “Move now.”

  Grosvenor danced his fingers over the tiles in a complicated sequence, activating their magic. He hesitated, glancing between the spell and the Hallowed. The entire bulk of the entity was pressed against the whisper-thin wall of magic still holding it in the salt circle.

  Isa whirled around in response to whatever Aiden had said to him, stepping our way. Aiden was right behind him. Kader reached for Ocean. Sky shoved herself between her sister and the elder sorcerer.

  We had seconds.

  “Get Sky and Ocean to the house,” I said, shoving the curse breaker to the side with my foot.

  “And if they won’t go?” he asked, scrambling to his feet.

  “Make them,” I snarled, squaring off along the tiled spells simmering at my feet. Khalid stepped tightly to my left. His hand ghosted up my back as whatever spell he thought could bring me down built in his palm. Energy shivered up my spine.

  I turned to look at Aiden as Khalid settled his hand on the back of my neck. An electrical charge warmed my skin.

  I was ready. I’d do what I needed to do, as always. Except this time, I was protecting someone I truly and utterly loved, not just following orders.