The Laen’aroth’s hair had become another shock of white now flurrying around his head. Every inch of his flesh crackled with internal light, turning the same ashen gray as his hand when he’d tried to force Jessica into ending him in the bank’s kitchen. And the light—the light she’d seen rippling through him and bursting from his mouth into the storm of the Xaharí sky before he had, in fact, dropped dead in the dirt—now blazed from his open mouth.
“No.” she tried to lurch toward him, but Mel yanked her back.
“You heard what he said—”
“Look at him!” Jessica struggled in her friend’s grasp, but then Cedrick and Anthony were on her too, gripping her arms and holding her back. “We can’t do this without him!”
“We have five, Jess,” Cedrick growled, and they all pulled her back toward the table and the spell they were there to cast. “The spell. We can’t do it without you.”
Leandras was dying. Right there in front of her, and there was nothing she could do.
Fuck that.
“Jessica!”
She ripped free of her friends’ hands and raced toward the Laen’aroth bucking in wordless torture beneath the light encapsulating him.
This wasn’t right. None of this was supposed to happen.
A streaking blur of silver raced in front of her and stopped her in her tracks. Damian scowled down at her, blocking Leandras completely from view, his square jaw set grimly before he swept her off her feet and literally carried her toward the casting circle.
“No!” Jessica snarled and hissed and lashed out, but her Umbál friend flittered them both through his multi-dimensional swarm and set her down in front of the table and the casting circle and the reagents she’d sacrificed so much to bring here.
Now she had to sacrifice Leandras too?
Damian grunted, grabbed her hands, and slammed them both down on the table. “It’s just another job, Jess. Do it.”
Fuck.
He was right, and at the same time, he had no idea how wrong he was. None of them did.
But her family—a group of highly skilled and even more dangerous criminals who’d been all she’d ever needed for years—were here to get the job done.
There was no one else.
Jessica stared at the runes drawn over the rough grain of the wooden table and studied each of the artifacts she and Leandras had gathered.
Now or never. And Leandras was—
A broken howl raged from the Dalu’Rázj as the last of his form materialized in this world.
“He was mine, Guardian.”
That voice. The Gateway’s voice. The voice of Xahar’áhsh and the one who’d consumed it.
Time seemed to stand still in that moment, and Jessica knew without a doubt that none of her friends gathered behind her could hear it.
“From one Roth’akán to another, vestrohím, you will not prevail.”
Jessica’s vision darkened. The splitting earth around her, the shouts of her friends, the feeling of the hard table beneath her hands all disappeared.
What the fuck was happening?
If she dropped dead now, it was over for everyone.
Then a glimmer of violet light filled everything in her mind and her being where nothing else existed.
“Jessica.”
Leandras voice was faint, barely above a whisper. Barely there at all.
“End it. With everything you have. Then finish him.”
The meaning behind those words shouldn’t have been as clear as it was.
He shouldn’t have asked her to do this.
She shouldn’t have had to decide. Again.
Then the violet light flickered out, and the rest of the world came crashing back with horrific clarity.
“Fucking start the spell, Jess!” Anthony snarled.
She shoved herself away from the table and turned toward the fae man struggling desperately in the Dalu’Rázj’s hold above the ground.
The monster shimmering in front of the nauseating green portal bellowed with a thousand voices, and everything after that happened all at once.
Jessica unleashed every bit of magic she’d taken from the Laenmúr’s mass spell and from the Brúkii and let it all go. But not toward the Dalu’Rázj; Leandras had made that perfectly clear.
Her magic surged in a crackling column of oily black toward the Laen’aroth dying in his last master’s cage.
And maybe he’d die now beneath the power of the new darkness to whom he’d sworn himself, but this was the final thread.
The Dalu’Rázj’s hold over the fae man shattered the second her magic struck Leandras. The light around him splintered and fragmented across the clearing.
Leandras dropped like a stone.
The air filled with screams and snarls and barked threats.
And magicals surged forward from literally everywhere.
Requiem members in their stupid black robes. Gray suits with a green hand stamped on one shoulder. Magicals of every race and size and ferocity swarming through the trees and lighting the air with a barrage of thrown spells and attack magic and curses.
Half of them screamed the Guardian’s name in a curdling battle cry.
A bellowing shout in Xaharí came from behind the portal before a blinding flash of light and Railen in his goddamn brown robe racing across the grass to lead the original Order of Laenmúr into the fray.
“This is new.” That was Rebecca, her normally haughty voice now completely stripped of trying to pretend she was better than the rest of them as she set a hand on Jessica’s shoulder.
The war had come to them, surging around the Dalu’Rázj and the casting circle where Jessica stood with five other magicals who knew her power and what she could do.
Who knew her.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Mel muttered, “so start the damn spell, Jess.”
She did.
How Jessica could remember the words to recite them once before the rest of Corpus picked up the incantation was beyond her. They shouldn’t have been able to hear it over the screams and explosions and raging chaos all around them.
The second their voices rose with hers, she knew it was working.
The casting circle on the table thrummed with energy, lighting up with a yellow glow. The black orb of the Madraqór seed shivered. Deep cracks split through the blood-red gem of the Heart of Ithríl. And the Umur’udal...did nothing.
Fuck, they were running out of time.
Again and again Jessica and her friends chanted while the battle raged everywhere. Trees splintered and toppled. Chunks of boulders cracked apart and flew through the air with deadly spells behind them.
Then, finally, the strip of rune-scarred flesh as the third and final reagent in the Hevrikai spell that had never been cast before and could never be cast again erupted in black flames.
The Dalu’Rázj let out an otherworldly scream that felt like it would shatter the fabric of reality. Jessica almost stopped the incantation but forced herself to continue. Her friends’ voices rose behind her in terrified whispers, but Mel hadn’t been screwing around.
They weren’t going anywhere.
Tongues of green flame surged away from the monstrous, formless beast who meant to take this world for himself just like he’d taken everything else. Magicals screamed as the fires consumed them—both Laenmúr and Hakali loyalists fighting for their master from another world.
The ground didn’t so much tremble as the Dalu’Rázj moved forward. It sank, cracked, seeped farther into itself until Jessica was sure they’d all be swallowed up by a massive sinkhole.
Now, she couldn’t stop the spell even if she tried. But if the horror raging toward her and crushing the factions of both sides without caring who fell beneath his power reached Jessica and the casting circle, that sure as hell would stop it all.
The black fire consuming the Umur’udal burst higher, that strip of flesh the Dalu’Rázj had shed long ago hissing and crackling and starting to turn in on itself.
>
It wasn’t fast enough. They had no more time.
She was only barely aware of a blur of sandy-colored movement darting across the grass, weaving in and out of stampeding feet and scrabbling around wayward spells crashing into the ground.
Confucius stopped halfway between Jessica’s desperate casting and the oncoming Dalu’Rázj.
It was so ridiculous, she could have laughed, but the incantation had full hold of her now.
And the immortal lizard who’d saved her once didn’t need anyone else to save her now, apparently.
A brilliant light flared around the reptile in the grass, and then a howling, roaring purple light emerged from the lizard’s open mouth. It bloomed into the air—the snarling head of a lion wreathed in purple flames and surging toward the monstrous beast.
The Guardian’s Flame from a fucking lizard.
No shit.
For a split second, the battle destroying the open swath of land paused as everyone looked for the source of the Guardian’s Flame—a well-known spell, clearly aptly named, with more power behind it than any of the clashing factions could summon on their own.
And then the Hevrikai spell completed by Jessica and her five channeling accomplices had the last few seconds it needed to finish everything.
The Umur’udal disappeared beneath the black flames. The Dalu’Rázj reared back, screaming and bellowing.
Jessica had no more control over the Madraqór and the Heart of Ithríl than anything else at this point as they lifted from the casting circle and sailed toward the monster. If they’d been activated by anyone else in any other way, the Dalu’Rázj would have won.
Instead, they struck the ravager of Xahar’áhsh in the core just as the Guardian’s Flame winked out of the sky—and who knew where Confucius was now.
A crackling burst of black and red light exploded from the horned creature of green poison and black flames, and the Dalu’Rázj shivered in a frozen, rippling fury.
Jessica stared at the crackling lines of red and black racing up and down the monstrous form and knew it wasn’t over.
She darted around the table, escaping Mel’s desperate attempt to hold her back. Her friends shouted after her, but she couldn’t stop now.
Jessica ducked beneath a swarm of blazing shards streaking from a blackhorn’s outstretched hands. Glimpses of familiar faces raced past her—Boris’ wide eyes, Reynaldo’s horror, Railen’s furious scowl.
Someone else tried to snatch at her and keep her back, but she was too fast. She had to be.
The spell would be useless without what she was about to do next, because the chaos of so much power freezing the Dalu’Rázj now would only fuel him if she didn’t act.
Jessica was the only one who could do this, and now she knew why.
She skidded to a halt in the grass, as close as she could get now because the heat flaring off the Dalu’Rázj like a furnace would probably burn her to a crisp if she kept going. Inconvenient, but not impossible.
Because just like she knew she had to seize and draw into herself whatever life around her existed, she knew now exactly how to do the opposite.
Jessica dropped to her knees as a spear of hissing golden attack magic hurtled over her head, then slammed her palms into the searingly hot grass. White light burst from her hands and raced across the ground toward the surge of power shuddering within the Dalu’Rázj’s temporary confinement. To make it permanent, there had to be life.
Death and chaos wouldn’t end death and chaos.
But the life that could have brought this bad motherfucker to victory was exactly what would stop him.
The blazing white light crackled up the hard shell of black and red encasing the Dalu’Rázj just as the monstrous head broke free and sent shards of steaming...whatever it was flying across the clearing like a bursting eggshell.
And Jessica’s magic most vestrohím would never know—the light she’d found—surged straight into the black seed of the Madraqór buried in the bastard’s chest. Then she gave it everything she had.
The deafening bellow curdling up the Dalu’Rázj’s death-defying throat made the ground tremble again before it cut out completely. The center of his ghastly form bulged and rippled, then a glowing, crystalline branch exploded free and rose toward the sky. One by one, the boughs of a new Mahayál grown right here on Earth ripped from the hard casing of a mostly finished prison. Massive roots rippled across the ground, tearing it to shreds before diving down deep and clawing into their final resting place.
A blinding, shimmering tree just like the one coveted by the Naruli people underground now twisted and grew, drowning out the green light of another world that would never again be touched by the one who’d ravaged it.
The light of Earth’s Mahayál surged straight up into the sky and released its final seal on the Dalu’Rázj with a burst. A rippling wave of heat and force pulsed from the base of the tree, blasting every warring magical off their feet.
Jessica sailed backward with the rest of them.
The last thing she saw before her head struck the ground was the tree’s final flash of light before the glittering crystalline bark sealed into permanence and the light went out.
Chapter 31
Jessica gasped.
The screams of dying magicals and those still stupid enough to keep fighting the surges of Laenmúr—now fully strengthened by the Mahayál and the capture of their age-old foe—echoed down a long tunnel of unconsciousness before she opened her eyes.
She heard Mel shout her name.
But when her vision focused, she found Leandras Vilafor on the ground beside her.
His eyes were open, swirling with that molten, mercurial silver and lined with dark circles. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth—not red but sludgy black like oil.
They’d been here before.
“No, no, no.” Jessica clawed her way closer and cried out in relief when the fae man slowly blinked and reached toward her. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”
“You did exactly what was necessary,” he muttered. His smile lined in glistening black blood made her gut turn over. “You heard me when I called to you.”
“Yeah, that was the bank’s job first.” That might have been the worst joke she’d ever made, but Leandras chuckled before coughing on a bubble of black sludge that poured from his mouth again. “Listen, I am not bringing you back from the dead a second time, okay? So just...don’t move.”
He grinned, his teeth coated in black. Whatever was sucking the life out of him now made him grimace, and he turned his head away from her.
Not again. Not this constant almost dying again.
Jessica had just trapped the Dalu’Rázj in a fucking tree. If she could do that, this was a walk in the park.
There were no wounds on the fae man’s body; no cuts, no bleeding holes, no burnt flesh or black veins streaking across his skin. But when she gently set her hands on his chest and searched for what needed to be drawn out of him immediately, she instantly pulled away with a snarl.
“No. I can’t.”
“You can.” Leandras grabbed one of her hands and placed it on his chest again. “Do it.”
“Okay, you don’t get it.” She jerked her hand away again. “That’s not something I can heal.”
“Yes it is.”
“Leandras, it’s your own fucking magic killing you. I am not ripping it out of you so you can—”
“So I can stay?”
Jesus, he was lying here on the ground, broken and bleeding and shriveling away under his own magic she’d turned against him, and that goddamn smirk just wouldn’t go away.
“I rather enjoy living, Jessica.”
“Yeah, you died, but you came back with what still makes you...you. Without it—”
“Without it I will be forced to return home.” Leandras grabbed her hand again and held it in both of his own. “Granted temporary leave from time to time.”
“That’s not—I can’t.”
Jessica groaned.
“I have no interest in dying with my full power intact,” he muttered. “What would be the point?”
“So I kill you either way, is that it?”
“No. You give me something to look forward to when I am well enough to step through that door beside your bedroom. That’s more than enough.”
“Shit.” Tears stung her eyes, but this wasn’t really anything new when faced with impossible decisions.
The Laen’aroth had sworn himself to her, and she’d be losing him either way.
He’d die right here if she kept being such a coward about it. And if she healed him this time, the fae she’d finally let close enough to actually make this hurt could only come back to visit from time to time.
For a fae—even a fae with only half his magic and the rest of it tied to a different world—that could be a few thousand years.
The sounds of the battle dying down somehow made it a lot easier to decide.
Her friends finally reached them and were considerate enough to stay the hell back, though Anthony puffed out a sigh and muttered, “Damn.”
Leandras squeezed her hand and nodded slowly. “After everything you and I have done to get here, Jessica, I can assure you you won’t be rid of me that easily.”
That brought a bitter laugh tickling up her throat. She bent down to kiss his gray, feverish forehead, then brought her lips to his ear and muttered, “Don’t hold this against me, okay?”
“If you’re referring to the agony, I admit I’ve developed a certain attraction to it.” The fae coughed, his chest momentarily seizing before he dropped his head back in the grass. “However, taking this long to just fucking do it already—”
Jessica slapped her hands down on his chest again and let her magic surge through her one more time to relieve the Laen’aroth of everything that had made him her most powerful ally. Through all of it. Even when she’d thought they could be nothing more than enemies.
He roared beneath her hands, his chest bucking and his silver eyes flying open in agony.
“Jess...” Mel stepped forward, but someone held her back.
The Spellcast Gate (Accessory to Magic Book 5) Page 32
