Allie Beckstrom 09 - Magic for a Price Page 24

  “That’s it, boys,” Shame said. “Let’s do the old man proud.”

  We stopped, spread out along the street at the bottom of the hill where the Overseer was standing.

  “That our plan?” Shame asked.

  “Do we need more?” Terric said.

  “Kill them,” I agreed, letting go of Zay’s fingers and adjusting the hold on my sword. “And don’t get killed.”

  “Simple,” Shame said. “Straightforward. A bit suicidal. I like it.”

  “You would,” Terric murmured.

  “You love me for it,” Shame said.

  “You do make life and death interesting.”

  Zay twisted and pulled something out of the satchel at his side. A disk. I had completely forgotten about them.

  “How many do we have left?”

  “I blew two opening the wells and closing the gates.”

  So one. We had only one disk left.

  “Trust me?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Then don’t let go.” He held the disk and I had to sheath my sword to take his hand, the disk between our palms.

  Zay started chanting.

  The Overseer laughed. “Too late, Guardian. All the Complements will be dead soon after I kill the four of you. The world is ours. Magic, dark and light, are ours. None can stand against us.”

  Leander and Isabelle lifted their hand. And that wall of black roared down the hill, tearing apart the world and aiming straight at us.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Shame and Terric cast a spell—maybe Block, maybe something I didn’t know. Whatever it was, it erupted out of the ground like liquid fire. Pure power.

  Shame shifted to stand slightly behind Terric, his hand gripping Terric’s shoulder, whispering to him, chanting with or coaching Terric as he drew the lines of a spell over and over again, a different angle, a different line to direct the fire, to channel the power.

  Their power.

  Soul Complements.

  Beautiful.

  Around Shame’s feet, the concrete cracked as he drank the energy out of it. Behind him, the grass on the other side of the tracks shriveled up to brown, then dust. I heard a tree snap, and fall.

  Shame held his free hand down, pulling life and energy out of the world, to feed into the spell Terric manipulated. Magic shifted from black to blinding white as it leaped to Shame’s hands, changed, and was passed into Terric’s hands.

  Shame bit down on a grin and whispered curses.

  Terric forced that magic to do what they wanted it to do, breaking rules, writing new ones. He sent the magic he and Shame alone could form straight overhead in an arcing, fiery wall.

  The wave of blackness and wave of fire met in an explosive scream. Ashes fell through the air with the stink of broken spells. They held back the dark magic.

  Just. But it was all they could do. Two men, holding up the collapsing world.

  They could not stop Leander and Isabelle from casting other spells.

  I glanced over my shoulder. Could see Cody bent over Nola, hugging her against him and sobbing. She was limp, lifeless.

  Dead.

  No. Oh, God, no.

  I wanted to run to her. I wanted to fall to my knees, wanted to scream. Wanted to do anything to make this stop.

  This couldn’t be my reality. I didn’t know how to live in a world without Nola. I didn’t know how to live in a world without Victor.

  Who else would I lose?

  Shame? Terric?

  Zayvion?

  Was Zay slipping away, closer and closer to death as he chanted? Would that be the price he paid for this magic? Would he die and leave me alone?

  I looked away from Cody, away from his pain. From my dead friend, held in his arms.

  No matter how much magic hurt to use it, no matter how much my body hurt, there was no pain as excruciating as losing Nola.

  I would do anything, pay any price to end the people who had done this to her.

  I fed that pain into my anger, my fury.

  “I want them dead,” I said to Zay. “More than dead.”

  He was still chanting, the most complicated spell I’d ever heard him use. Sweat and blood traced lines down the side of his face and fell in thick drops from his lips and nose.

  Zay looked up at me. Golden eyes. No brown. No black. No white. Just a pure, hating gold, loving gold. Powerful.

  Oh.

  I could not look away. I didn’t want to. I knew where I belonged. I belonged with him.

  Belonged to him.

  And he to me.

  “Yes,” he said, casting the spell from the disk that licked out and wrapped around me.

  I let go.

  Let go of the disk. Let go of the world. Let go of everything. And held on to him. Held on to Zayvion, just like I’d promised.

  My body fell away with a dreamlike softness. Zay’s hand was there to catch me. I laughed at the sudden freedom, the rightness of this moment, this choice. He kissed me as we moved together, a waltz, step-to-step, soul-to-soul. A dance promising joy, pleasure, and endless power.

  Soul Complements.

  Two minds. Two souls.

  But only one body. Just like Leander and Isabelle.

  Containing one fury, one purpose.

  To break magic to our will, and kill Leander and Isabelle.

  We turned—well, Zay turned. I was in his mind, somehow in his body too. It felt right, natural. It felt like all the cold and hollow places inside me were finally filled. Filled with the heat of him. With his love.

  With his anger. Our anger.

  I was aware of my body, still standing there next to us. I looked like I’d been run over by a truck. My jacket was torn, my hands bleeding, and a monster of a bruise seeped down from my forehead to the edge of my chin. It was a little like seeing a life-sized cardboard photo of myself, until I realized I—my body—was still moving.

  Dad. He shook his head, my head. Held up my hands and looked at my fingers and palms. Then he looked up at me, at Zay, and gave us a sad smile.

  It was very, very odd to see that. To see myself from the outside. To see myself being moved by him. Inhabited by him. Worn by him.

  Hello, nightmare.

  There was no time to worry about it. About my body. About what my dad might do now that he was alone inside of me.

  Free to use me any way he wanted.

  He had told me he could help. Keeping my body breathing, thinking, alive while I was joined with Zayvion could be help. But I didn’t think that was what he had meant.

  The Overseer drew magic into a line in the air in front of her. It cracked like a whip. Not at me and Zay. Not at Shame and Terric, but directly at Dad.

  In me.

  Dad lifted my hand and spoke a Block spell I didn’t know. The spell skittered off the Block like black water. But I, Dad, stumbled back, fell, groaning when my broken left wrist tried to brace for the impact.

  “Stone,” Dad said. “Allie, call him.”

  I had already called for Stone. Doing it twice wouldn’t make much of a difference. Also, there were a couple of crazy people trying to kill us. I didn’t think Stone would tip the scales in our favor.

  Zay? I thought.

  Your Summon was strong enough, he thought. If he can, he’ll come. Now it is our time to make magic our own.

  We pulled on magic. I wanted to cry out with joy. Magic leaped sweet and willing to our hands. I knew we were still injured, in pain. But using magic was easy, soothing, sensual. It made the pain of our body a distant echo, leaving the sweet promise of pleasure, any pleasure we could imagine, behind.

  Zayvion laughed.

  This was the way magic should feel.

  We didn’t need a spell. Didn’t need to carve a path to guide magic. It would become anything we wanted it to be.

  Magic was like a second sight, a sixth sense that let us feel the entire city as if it were our skin. We were aware of every road, building, river, tree. We were aware of every perso
n.

  In an instant, I knew my Hounds were fighting, some hurt, but no one dead, all of them buzzing on the adrenaline of taking down Isabelle and Leander’s armies. With a brush of thought, I could feel Maeve, Hayden, Kevin, and Violet. Their wash of concern and grim satisfaction of a fight coming to an end. The tide was turning. In our favor.

  Leander and Isabelle may have brought an army to our town, but the town was still ours. No one could take it from us.

  Farther off, if we reached just a bit more, I could feel the flickering emotions of Davy, Sunny, and Collins. Alive. Safe. They had four people with them. Soul Complements.

  And I realized, if we wanted to, Zayvion and I could find anyone anywhere in the world.

  It was a heady feeling. Especially for someone who had spent years Hounding and tracking people and spells. It was an ability I did not want to let go of.

  But even more, we wanted to bend magic until it became a weapon in our hands.

  To kill Leander and Isabelle.

  Now, we thought.

  Magic pulsed over us, promising anything. Everything. We breathed it in, drank it in.

  Magic hummed with an electricity I could feel in our bones. I liked it.

  Proxy? I asked Zay.

  No. We wipe them out of existence.

  God, I love you.

  I braced for the pain.

  There was no pain as magic took on the shape of our desire.

  The only way to kill Leander and Isabelle was to break them apart.

  Terric yelled. Shame yelled, then started swearing with a vengeance. We could feel Terric’s pain, and Shame’s anger, before we looked their way.

  Terric was on one knee. Blood poured from a wound in his side. The wall of fire, the Shield had fallen. Shame carved a spell through the air, then twisted back and threw it at the Overseer.

  Terric lifted a gun, took two hard breaths, and aimed at the Overseer.

  He unloaded the clip. The Overseer jerked back, hit once, twice. Kill shots. That body was not alive. But Leander and Isabelle were still filling it, using it like a puppet. They couldn’t maintain that for long. Could they?

  The Overseer tipped her head to one side. Flicked her fingers.

  Brushed away the rest of the bullets. And brushed away Shame’s spell.

  “Brush this away, bitch,” Zay said.

  We threw magic, raw, wild, arcing across the sky, licking flames along the ground, an inferno of magic, a tornado, spiraling down around her. Magic following our want. Our need.

  It tore through Leander and Isabelle. Consumed them. Dug in fingers to tear them free of that body, to tear them apart.

  They uttered a word. Our magic shattered, fell around their feet like a curtain of heavy rain.

  It hadn’t stopped them. But it had hurt them. The body stumbled forward, onto one knee. For a moment, I saw the shadows of Leander and Isabelle, two angry ghostlike forms that hovered over the bleeding and burned body. Then they sank into her again.

  And pushed the body up onto her feet. She started walking our way, limping, a gory, inhuman mockery of life. Dark magic followed her, lashing and burning behind her like a storm. It bent the buildings, warping them into the strange shapes of the buildings I had seen in death.

  They were mutating St. Johns. They were changing the world with magic.

  Dad had said a hundred times that he wanted magic in the right hands. I just had never really thought about what magic might do in the wrong hands.

  It could destroy the world. It could remake the world into something broken and alien.

  It could kill us all.

  This was why the ancient Authority had broken magic. To keep it out of Leander and Isabelle’s hands. They knew what they would do with magic. Knew what they had done, and what they wanted.

  Pure, utter destruction.

  Shame and Terric yelled a word. All the light of day snuffed out. We were suddenly plunged into the blackness of night.

  Then they blasted a spell at the Overseer. It howled and tore at her.

  Zay and I threw magic, calling it from the sky, the earth, the air. To kill the undead Soul Complements, to break them, rip them apart, end them.

  But nothing was enough. Not all the magic we could call on. Not all the magic we threw at them. We were too evenly matched. We needed something else, something more that Leander and Isabelle did not have.

  I knew Dad, in me, couldn’t call on magic. I’d…well, my body, would pass out.

  Still, he was talking to himself, maybe a mantra to calm his mind and thoughts, maybe a spell.

  The Overseer stood in the middle of the street, several hundred yards in front of us, magic responding to them just as quickly as to us, dark magic licking across their fingers, as they chanted, two voices filling the air with a new spell.

  Fine. Just because we couldn’t kill them didn’t mean we couldn’t stop them.

  Enough! we commanded. Hold.

  Magic answered, forming a cage around the Overseer. The cage stopped her from moving, which was good. But we wanted magic to do more. Instead of trying to pull them out of the body, we locked them in that dead flesh, trapping Leander and Isabelle so they could not escape.

  They snarled, fighting the magic that we directed at them as we rebuilt our spells faster than Leander and Isabelle could tear them apart.

  Terric pushed up onto his feet, and Shame held on to the back of his jacket to help him stay standing. Each of them used one hand to pour magic into a barrier to slow the dark magic that was still consuming the city, building by building.

  Every time Zay blinked, the world went a little too dark for a little too long. He had lost blood. Too much blood, and I was pretty sure he’d cracked ribs that had just recently healed and maybe done more damage. A lot more damage.

  I gave him all the strength I could, so we could stand strong, steady.

  But it was all we could do to keep that cage intact, to force magic to hold them as they twisted, pushed, pulled, and blasted at the bars around them.

  Our grip on magic was slipping. Our grip on consciousness was slipping.

  We couldn’t hold out for much longer. Shame and Terric couldn’t hold out for much longer.

  A shadow knifed down out of the sky, something big, coming at us fast. We glanced up.

  Stone angled down and landed at the feet of my body, answering the Summon spell I had cast.

  Dad lifted my hand toward him, but Stone’s ears flattened against his big head and he growled.

  He didn’t like Dad running the show either.

  “Stone,” Dad said. With my mouth, with my voice.

  Stone backed away from him, snarling.

  “It is fine,” he said. “Everything is fine. Allison is safe with Zayvion.” He held out my hand—the unbroken one—again. “Come to me,” he coaxed. “We can help her. Together, we can help her.”

  The Overseer yelled and raged. Leander and Isabelle’s voices filled my mind, and the world went dark for a heartbeat. For two.

  “Die!” they screamed.

  They pulled on our magic. So fast, it slipped my control, slipped Zayvion’s control. They drank down everything we were throwing at them. Drank down everything Shame and Terric hit them with.

  Time seemed to slow. I felt the wrenching pain of magic being ripped, physically, out of Zay by Leander and Isabelle. I heard Shame and Terric yell.

  And I watched as Dad cast a spell with a single finger, standing still in the maelstrom of power, drawing a simple glyph with his signature. He kissed my right palm and blew across it, sending the spell to softly float toward Stone.

  Leander and Isabelle turned magic into a bolt of raw black power and hatred. Light and dark magic snapped, arcing out in a block radius.

  They threw that spell. Straight for Dad. For me. My body.

  Magic blasted into my chest.

  I watched my body buckle, stiffen, and fall.

  Lifeless as a rag doll.

  There was a hole in my chest where fles
h should be, skin should be, bone should be.

  I lay there, staring, blank, as blood oozed out of that hole.

  My Dad, a ghost, stepped up and out of me. He looked down at my body, maybe with regret. Maybe just with relief to be free of me.

  Dead.

  I was dead.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  No, I thought. The pain was slow to reach me, but it found me. The world spun as that pain pulled on me. I didn’t know how to hold on to living. Didn’t know how not to die.

  Don’t leave, Zayvion cried out, wrapping his need, his love around me, holding me strong to his soul, as if trying to tie me tight against the wind.

  I held on to him, too afraid to let go.

  Dad, a ghost, turned. Looked at me inside Zayvion. Shook his head. Regret. But not sorrow. More like disappointment.

  And then the spell that he’d blown on a kiss to Stone landed right in the center of the gargoyle’s forehead.

  “Thank you, Allison,” Dad said. “For your sacrifice.”

  The spell sent out soft ribbons of light and darkness to wrap around Stone. Where the spell touched the glyphs carved into Stone, the ribbon sank in and caught up that glyph like a bead on a string. All the glyphs across Stone’s body flickered to life, joined, and created a net.

  The net surrounded Dad, lifted him, carried him, his ghost, his soul, and sank him into Stone.

  Stone had carried Zayvion’s soul out of death.

  That had been my dad’s idea.

  Stone had carried both light and dark magic inside him to purify the wells.

  That had been my dad’s idea.

  Stone had been carved by Cody, a savant, and spells of Passage and Transference had been carved into him. Spells that could carry someone’s soul safely to another place, another state of living.

  That had been my dad’s idea too.

  Cody had begged Daniel not to do something. I was pretty sure it was this. Here. Now.

  Cody had begged Daniel not to possess Stone.

  Stone lifted up on his back legs, his wings spread wide, arms out to each side, head tipped up to the sky.

  And then the magic Dad had cast in him, the glyphs carved into him, strummed like an orchestra of instruments all playing their part of one chord, building a song, harmonizing light and dark magic into a glorious chorus.