Blood Magic

by Tessa Gratton

  Below me, I felt the earth. I imagined it sinking down for miles, through dirt and bedrock, through tectonic plates, and all the way to the burning core of the world. How far down did Josephine’s reach extend? She had trees, birds, animals. Why not the earth itself?

  She had Nick. And Eric. She’d had Reese, and I could not let everything now spiral out of control like it had so quickly the night he’d died.

  I pressed my eyes closed. I had to free myself, to find Josephine’s body and bind it before she hurt anybody else. The scissors.

  Digging in, I withdrew them and sat up. Most of the crows had flown off, but a few hopped around me. They watched, flapping their wings. I’d have to be fast, because Josephine would know what I was doing. The other possessed woodland creatures were hiding. Waiting for something. Eric’s limp body swayed slightly in the wind. My stomach twisted; I put the scissors against one of the roots, and sawed at it. The blade cut in, smoothly, and I kept slicing. It took forever to hack through, and several of the possums had crept out from under the trees.

  They looked like alien rat-monsters. These had blood on their snouts.

  I slashed at the next root, and heard a crow caw. There was grunting. It sounded like pigs. Did Nick have wild pigs in his woods? I didn’t look. Instead I cut at my wounded palm, and smeared the blood over both hands. I grabbed roots and ordered, “Release. Now. Let me go!” I imagined them snaking back, quickly. I was good at imagining—I did it all the time and it made me a great actress, being able to slip into another reality for a few hours, to believe I was someone else. I could do it.

  I closed my eyes and imagined being free. “Release me. Release. Release.” The memory of Nick using poetry to focus surfaced. My brain scrambled for rhyme. “Roots release me, let me free. Earth release me, let me free. Blood release me, let me free.” I built up the picture in my mind: the roots cracking and breaking apart.

  The roots crumbled into ashes.

  Gasping, I stumbled to my feet and turned to face the forest. The possums chattered at me, hissing through their horrible teeth. Shadows fluttered overhead. Crows. They circled like vultures. Josephine was everywhere.

  I would have to bind the whole forest.

  A mask. I needed a mask for this. But not an imaginary one, slipped on only in my mind’s eye. I needed a real one.

  Holding out my bleeding hand, I smeared my fingers through the blood, and pressed them to my cheek. My skin burned as the power inside me came crashing out. I painted, streaking blood across my forehead, down my nose, over my chin.

  Red, dark, and dangerous.

  It was the most genuine mask I’d ever put on. My power, my self. Me.

  This is who I am.

  NICHOLAS

  I was inside the grave. Surrounded by walls of wet dirt. Under my feet: Reese’s casket. The pale shine of it was encrusted with mud. All I saw, as my body crouched down, was how white it was, how it gleamed like the moon, or marble.

  A click and slow creak as I unlatched and opened the top half of the casket. There he was. His face was slack and gray, mouth hanging open, eyelids half parted. The shadows under his cheekbones were greenish, and his hair fell limp onto the satiny pillow. My heart pounded, blood roaring in my ears like a tornado.

  And the smell slid up into my nose. I felt my tongue work as I gagged, but couldn’t lean back or climb out or run. I couldn’t even close my eyes.

  My hand rose to my mouth, but instead of covering my nose, I bit my own finger harder than I’d bite into an apple. Pain sharpened my awareness, and for a moment, I was free. I stumbled, landing on the casket hard enough to crack it.

  Then the brief freedom was over, and I crawled forward, reached down into the casket, and with my bleeding finger painted a rune onto Reese’s corpse’s forehead.

  The skin broke. And a piece of it slid away, down his temple, trailing ooze like a tearstain.

  A fat red drop of blood splashed down from above, smacking into Reese’s cheek. Then another.

  I looked up—I didn’t want to, but I had to.

  A fox crouched at the edge of the open grave, a broken crow in its long jaws. It dropped the crow, and my hands caught it. They held it out so that the blood spattered onto Reese’s heart, staining the suit he’d been buried in.

  I closed my eyes. I can close my eyes. I threw the crow aside. Nausea swept through me, and my bitten finger throbbed. I felt it down to my toes. But I didn’t care that it hurt. I controlled my body again. She’d let me go.

  Just as I pushed up to my knees on the coffin, Reese’s eyes opened.

  Yelping, I fell back again. His eyes were glassy. Dead. But his hands came up and gripped the sides of the casket. He pulled himself to sit. And looked at me. His ruined, grayish hands reached into his lap, and he grasped the spell book.

  His lips shook, and a harsh whisper slid out, puckering my skin with horror.

  “Nick.”

  His breath smelled like rank perfume. He reached for me, but I jolted away, fast. A rough sound like choking burst out of him. He was laughing. Of course—it was Josephine.

  Reese’s body stood up, and she turned him to face the grave wall. It was a struggle, but he heaved up over the side.

  I pressed into the earth and tried to keep breathing.

  SILLA

  It would take too long to run all the way around the forest, so I had to go through it, and through all of Josephine’s possessed animals. I walked closer, holding the scissors out like a sword, my injured hand tucked against my side to keep the blood flow down.

  A row of squirrels prattled at me, their little snickers cold and awful. Maybe they wouldn’t do anything. Maybe they were only watching.

  I reached the edge, where the first trees rose up and spread out their branches. Beyond them was nothing but shadows. The trees twined so close together, and there was so much undergrowth, the sun barely penetrated.

  Swallowing, I thought of Nick. I had to get to him. Had to bind Josephine so that she couldn’t hurt him. Or kill him.

  Screw the animals. It wasn’t like there were tigers in the woods. So long as I didn’t run into any wild pigs, I should be fine.

  I gripped the scissors and strode in.

  “Silla.”

  It came from above. “Oh, God.” Eric’s eyes were open. Against the mask of blood, they were extremely pale. “Eric?” Was it him? Had Josephine let him go?

  “Silla, I feel … Help me down.” His head lolled.

  The branches he was tangled in wrapped around his arms, curling under his shoulders and around his chest. Even if I could get up to him, what would happen if I freed him? It was at least a twenty-foot drop. He’d break bones.

  “Silla,” he whispered again.

  A crow landed on a branch, shaking Eric’s body as it bobbed closer, wings out. It cawed. Eric winced. His throat worked like he was going to puke.

  “Hang on,” I called. If it was Josephine, I still had the scissors.

  I put my bloody palm against the nearest tree with its branches holding him aloft. Leaning into it, I said, “Put him down. Bend your branches, and set him onto the ground.” I was descended from the Deacon’s blood. I was strong enough. All I needed was blood. “Obey me,” I whispered, lips brushing the bark. I couldn’t think of any stupid rhymes. “I bled for you, obey me.” I visualized the trees bending, untwining, letting him go.

  A rustle and crack alerted me, and I spun. The trees bowed, lowering Eric down. They shifted in the darkness, looking more like liquid than rough wood, like sinuous black ribbons and rope slowly placing Eric onto the leaf-strewn forest floor.

  I ran to him. He lay prone. “Eric?” I bit my lip, hesitant to touch him.

  “Thanks,” he whispered without opening his eyes.

  “Are you hurt?” It was amazing that he was alive. Much less whole.

  “Yeah, but … not bad. I think. I just need to lie here.”

  “Do you know what’s happening?” I eyed the raccoon shuffling closer to us. It s
at back on its haunches and clasped its tiny hands together.

  “Little bit.” His face spasmed, and he coughed.

  “I have to go—to get Nick. We should move you out of the forest. The animals are, um, possessed.”

  Swallowing, he opened his eyes and turned his head. A string of mice had joined the raccoon. “Jesus, your face,” he muttered.

  I gritted my teeth together. I had to go, but I couldn’t just leave him.

  “I’ll be okay.” Eric’s voice sounded raw. “I can get out. I’ll get to my car.”

  “I’ll be back when I can.”

  “Wait.” He dug into his jeans pocket and pulled out a lighter. “Fire.”

  I scuttled around for an appropriate torch.

  NICHOLAS

  Chunks of dirt pelted me, but I clawed through them. I dragged myself up out of the grave, finally, and lay down across a line of blood. The smell was thick in the air. Rot, sulfur, burning hair, fresh earth, tangy blood. With the arm of the backhoe, I heaved myself up. I had to get back, before anything happened to Silla. Before Josephine possessed me again.

  Without the armor, it probably didn’t matter, but I used the last bit of blood on my finger to paint the protection rune over my heart.

  It couldn’t have been more than five minutes since they left, but there was no sign of the corpse. I thought of last week, of being alone and blind, not with Silla when she needed me. I had to find her now.

  I ran.

  SILLA

  I ran.

  The trees were too tight together, cutting off the last of the fading sunlight. And a handful of crows darted ahead of me, pressing me in a direction that would lead me out of the forest at the wrong angle to get to the cemetery quickly. But they screamed again and again until I wanted to flatten my hands over my ears to block it out. Instead I swung my torch at them, yelling. They banked away, but kept coming around in front of me to drive me left.

  A dark form darted into my way, and I skidded to a halt as the deer’s head swung around to knock me over. I landed in a bush, barely keeping hold of my torch. The deer bared its teeth and whined like a child. I stood up, fire in hand. “Back off!” I screamed, flailing my arms. Crows dive-bombed it, but it swung its antlers around, and they were forced away, bawling their displeasure.

  The deer hopped back, whined again, a long, squeaking bleat. I slashed at it with the torch and tried to dodge around it. It kicked out with a hoof, catching my thigh. I yelled, swung the torch again, and it darted back.

  The rest of the crows herded me on, no matter which direction I tried to go. How was I supposed to search for Josephine’s body when they kept pushing me and pushing me?

  One darted down and screamed in my face. I fell back, my hand landing in soft mud. Warm mud. The torch sputtered and I grabbed it up again. The mud was tinged red.

  Crows cawed and I saw it. A golden curl poking from between two roots. Her body had literally been swallowed by the forest. I stuck the end of the torch into the ground and dug the spell components out of my sweatshirt pocket. With the scissors, I cut the curl away from the mud, and I pressed it into the wax, which I held close to the fire so that it softened enough for me to mold it into a tight ball, with the hair worked deeply in.

  As I worked, the crows kept talking. I couldn’t think about them, as long as they didn’t attack. I opened the card case and stuck the wax inside, pushing it into the corners and flattening it out so that I could snap the case shut. Finally I wound the red thread around the box again and again, whispering “Be bound” with every beat of my heart.

  I sealed it with a drop of blood. Then I stuffed the torch into the base of the tree. Dry grass lit with a whoosh of air.

  I stood up and pushed on. The crows flew with me now, not against me.

  The edge of the forest came into sight—a flat, dark expanse of fallow field before the crumbling wall of the cemetery. Squinting and tightening my fists, I pumped harder.

  And I erupted out of the trees.

  Directly in front of my brother.

  I lurched back. His eyes were pale, whited-out like with cataracts, and the skin sort of hung off his bones. Blood smeared across his face and dripped down onto his chest, splattering the tie he’d been buried in. His clavicle punched up at his skin as though waiting to sprout through at any moment.

  “Sister,” Josephine said through his dead lips, and I recognized his voice. It was harsh and rattled, but it was his.

  “Get away from me!”

  “Come, Silla, it’s your brother.” His lips smiled, the skin cracking like they were seriously chapped. Clear fluid oozed out.

  “Help me, Silla, and we’ll live forever together. All we need is the powder from his bones.”

  “No, never.” I stared at his face, at the hanging skin. I was empty; I was hollow. Reese.

  He held up the spell book. “Back up, and we’ll go heal my body. It’s almost all over, darling.”

  I slapped my hand against his chest. “I banish thee from this body!”

  The corpse twisted and shuddered, and bile choked me, coating my tongue with acid.

  NICHOLAS

  The crumbling cemetery wall gouged my hands as I vaulted over, then raced for Silla where she struggled with the Reese corpse on the track of gravel road.

  He lifted the spell book and slammed it into Silla’s face.

  She collapsed backward, and I flung myself at him. I hit with a wet thunk, and we crashed to the ground. The rotten smell gagged me, and then the corpse was back on its feet, dragging me up off the ground. I punched back with my elbows, kicked with my legs. But it didn’t feel pain, hardly seemed to notice my efforts. Like kicking and punching Play-Doh. I couldn’t get away.

  Crows circled overhead, faster and faster.

  I forced my eyes open as Reese’s arm came around my neck. “I’ll enjoy spilling your blood,” Josephine spat through Reese’s dead lips. “All I want is to live again—how difficult is that?”

  The arm tightened, and I couldn’t breathe. Orange light flashed in my peripheral vision.

  “You—just—don’t—understand!”

  I flung my head around, only then hearing the crackle of flames. The forest was on fire. “Fire,” I whispered harshly.

  The arm around my neck loosened as Josephine flung us both around to face the forest.

  “No,” she yelled, “my body!” Crows dive-bombed us, their wings brushing my face. She released me, raising Reese’s arms to smack them away. But they drove her at the trees.

  Two crows snagged their claws in his hair. Reese’s body folded abruptly, and he crumpled to the ground.

  I panted for a moment, staring at the leaping flames. She was in there. Her body was. It had to be anchored in there somewhere, and if it burned, so did Josephine.

  I crawled to Silla. Her head lolled to one side, and her entire face was painted with blood. From a gash in her temple, fresh blood trickled quickly into her hair. She wasn’t moving. Barely breathing.

  The crows that had hounded Josephine darted around me now. Hopping frantically.

  Closing my eyes, I whispered, “Blood and earth, hear my appeal: through skin and flesh, readily heal.” Again I said it, but louder, and then again. The heat built up, and I begged her to stay, begged the blood and magic to work.

  My heart churned over and over, aching, and I leaned down to kiss Silla’s lips. They were hot—as hot as mine. “Silla,” I whispered.

  She gasped for breath.

  SILLA

  Everything was black.

  My whole body ached, tingling painfully like when your foot falls asleep and then all the blood rushes back in. I couldn’t move, but felt tears film over my eyes and spill down my nose. I heard a scream, and smelled smoke. And blood. So much blood. My throat was raw, my tongue heavy. I tried to move my arms, and I think my finger twitched. My heart resonated hollowly inside me.

  I sucked in a long breath, and cold air rushed in along with a mouthful of smoke and sticky blood.
I could taste it running down the back of my throat.

  Wind cut into me, and I coughed.

  “Silla?”

  Nick. I turned to him, burying my bloody face against his filthy shirt. I fisted my hands behind his back.

  “Babe. Silla.” He sounded like he was going to laugh. “Oh my God!”

  “Reese.” I remembered Reese’s body with the flesh dripping off. Pink muscle. Yellow bones.

  “Come on, babe.” Nick struggled to get us both standing up. “We have to get away from here. The forest is burning.”

  “But.” I stumbled to put weight on my feet. “But Josephine.”

  “She’s dying in the forest.”

  I pushed away from him, tilted my face. His half smile was the best thing I’d ever seen. But I shook my head. It rolled with nausea—brain nausea, like my whole body wanted to vomit. “We have to bind her in there so that she’ll burn—or she’ll only escape again.” Digging the card case out of my pocket, I held it up. “It’s ready to go. Remember the rune.” I leaned over and drew it in the sticky mud with my finger.

  A cacophony of crying animals and cracking wood blared from the woods, and wind rose up, blowing toward the trees. My eyes ached like I’d been staring into the sun. “Help me, Nick.” I stood up. The fire glared between the black trees. A dozen crows leapt into the sky and flew around the forest like a crown, wheeling and cawing and chasing any little jays or robins that tried to flee. A crow dove at the ground, shrieking at a fox, chasing it back. More and more crows arrived, winging over us, encircling the woods as a living barrier.

  I dragged Nick to one of the trees. “Make the rune. We do it with blood, at the four corners of the woods, starting here, running clockwise.”

  “It’s too far.”

  “We can do it. We have to.” It was almost over.

  Nick tightened his jaw but nodded.

  NICHOLAS