Gray Dawn, page 15
Then again, I could see the two of them bonding over virtual bloodshed. It might be good for them.
Content to let Dad watch over her, I trailed after Marita and Derry, absorbing the sights.
The ranch reminded me a bit of the farm outside Samford and sent a pang of homesickness through me that was quickly swallowed by dread. The brief memory of the farm put me in the frame of mind to think on the centuria. That, of course, forced me to acknowledge Asa was absent from his place beside me. He was in Hael. Where Calixta ruled with impunity. And I hadn’t heard from either of them.
A cool breeze stirred my hair, drawing me out of my thoughts. The bite of frost hit me next in a shivering wave, and dread punched me in the gut. Bjorn—freaking Bjorn—shimmered into existence barely a yard from where I stood, stinking like black magic. His power hammered at me, icing me to the spot, slowly freezing me in place.
We had been tracking him, sure, but it was out of character for him to engage rather than evade.
“Get her out of here,” I snapped at Dad, who had tensed to intervene.
Denial parted his lips, but one look at my determination to save her snapped his mouth shut.
Burdened with the favor I asked of him, he cradled Colby against his chest and flew with her to safety.
Marita slammed into Bjorn in the next breath, Derry right behind her. The frost giant stumbled back, but he caught his balance and swatted Marita’s next lunge. He landed a punishing blow to Derry’s ribs, but it didn’t keep him down. Not with Bjorn advancing on me, the snarl twisting his blue lips promising I would pay for locking him in that cell. Maybe even for daring to exist.
“You can’t know how long I’ve waited for this moment.” Bjorn zeroed in on me, which suited me fine. He would kill the Mayhews without blinking, but me… I might retain enough value to the director to survive. I was happy to take one for the team to keep them breathing. “Your days have been numbered since you arrived at the manor, and your ticket has finally been punched.”
I told myself I had a pithy comment ready to throw at him, but I couldn’t unclench my frozen jaw.
“Stop,” Marita slurred, blood running down her chin. “Or I’ll make you stop.”
Derry took his cue from her, the Mayhews forming a wall in front of me.
No, no, no.
I wanted to yell at them to go, to run, to save themselves, but I couldn’t get out the words.
“Just like your mother,” Bjorn sneered. “Cavorting with beasts.”
“Watch yourself, Frosty.” Marita, wobbly on her legs, tensed to strike. “That’s my best friend you’re talking about.”
“Tell your friend I don’t converse with animals.” Bjorn never broke eye contact with me as he flung out his hands to either side. First Derry and then Marita went stiff as he froze them, the same as me. “As loath as I am to touch you, abomination, it’s time for us to go.”
With careless shoves, he knocked them over, and they thumped onto the dirt. Paralyzed. Magic locking their muscles. But that wasn’t the worst of it. No. Icicles grew from his palms. He broke one with a snap, bent down, and thrust it through Marita’s chest, pinning her to the ground. He did the same with Derry. There was nothing they could do. Nothing I could do as twin crimson stains spread across the soil.
“Interesting.” Bjorn peered down at me. “You didn’t cast a single spell.”
I promised his death with my glare and vowed I would be the one who ended him.
“You’re planning something. I can see it. I would kill you and be done with it if it were up to me.”
Back at you, I thought, fury boiling within me.
And then the ice encasing me began to melt.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Ithought it was Colby, channeling magic into me across the growing distance between us, thawing me from the inside out. But the burn was familiar. Magic—my magic—ignited my veins, engulfing me as it fought the spell Dad had cast to contain my power.
Pain ripped me in two, so much worse than removing the anchors, but the agony was cauterizing.
I overflowed with magic, every cell of my body drinking the energy down like I was a plant and power was rain in a desert.
This wasn’t going to end well.
Not for Bjorn. Not for me. Probably not for Colby.
As the Hunk began to radiate heat, begging me to call on it, I found it was easier to block out its siren song of endless power. Dad had torn out the deepest, worst, most festering anchors binding me to it. His spell, which had suffocated the spark out of me in order to save my life—my sanity—had eroded to nothing.
“You’re a snotty bastard,” I growled, “and you’re going to die for this.”
Bjorn, who had been bragging about how easily he contained me, recoiled from what he read on my face. He didn’t take a step back. He didn’t show fear lightly. But the slight shift of his weight was enough for me to grin as I broke his icy hold and punched out, gripping his throat in my hand.
“Where is he?” I channeled power down my arm, zapping him until his teeth rattled. “Where. Is. He?”
I didn’t have to name him. There was only one person Bjorn would protect above his own life.
“I’ll die before I betray him,” Bjorn gasped, and his spittle pelted my hand like hail.
“I was hoping you would say that.” I placed my other hand over his heart, reached down deep within myself, and threw every ounce of magic I possessed into that shriveled placeholder of an organ. “I’m not making the same mistake twice.”
Thrashing and spasming, the frost giant seized under my hand, but I showed him no mercy. He frothed at the mouth, his eyes rolling back, and then he hit his knees. But I was there, following him down. I kept my hold on him until I hurt, until I ached, until I burned. Then I kept on until his ice cube heart fell silent.
His body slumped sideways, hitting the ground, but I didn’t let go. I summoned the spell I had used a million times to immolate bodies and reduced him to ash I mixed with dirt to make sure he was dead and gone and never coming back for us again.
Slowly, I crawled toward Marita and Derry, until I knelt between them.
They were dying.
Both of them.
They were my friends.
Both of them.
I couldn’t save only one. The other would never forgive me.
Kneeling between them, I fisted the icicles in each of their chests and melted them. With the obstruction gone, blood gushed from the wounds as I planted a palm over each of their hearts and prayed for the power to heal them.
A whiff of rot tickled my nose, a subtle reminder I had all the power I needed if I would just let it in.
No. I aimed the rebuke inward, at the Hunk. You’re the reason I’m in this situation.
The dark artifact didn’t have to respond for me to sense its amusement. I knew as well as it did we were in this together. Our greed for more, more, more had forged it. I had let it seduce me the first time, told myself I had no other choice, but there was no going back if I used it as a crutch again. It would own me. Right down to my soul.
The temptation to embrace its power was worse than the craving for hearts had been. I was an addict in every sense of the word. I kept bouncing from addiction to addiction to addiction. Maybe that was my luck. Or maybe it was time I stopped letting life happen to me and started happening to it.
I could do this, maybe not alone, but with help from Colby. Not the book. Never again from the book.
Faint sparkles shimmered under my skin, a glittering warmth that brought tears to my eyes. This was the essence of Colby. Goodness. Love. Kindness. Her magic swirled with it, and as it washed through me, the ironclad grip of the Hunk loosened another degree. As her concentration increased, a brilliant light burst from my pores, funneling through me and down into the wargs’ chests.
Derry and Marita began glowing. Brighter and brighter. Until it hurt to look straight at them.
Their wounds sealed, leaving tender pink skin, but their chests didn’t rise. Their hearts didn’t beat. Neither of them moved.
“Wake up, wake up, wake up.” I sank deeper within myself. “I’m not quitting on you guys.”
It would be so easy to save them, a conniving voice whispered in my head. Let me help you.
No. I held tight to my convictions, but goddess it hurt. I won’t lean on you again.
We shall see.
As if the surface tension of a bubble had burst, the Hunk retreated, but that wasn’t far enough. I wanted it gone. Not hidden. Not protected. Not plotting its next move. Gone. Out of me. For good.
Welcoming Colby’s power on full blast, I let it surge within me, hot and pure and bright, clearing my senses.
Magic—my magic—hit me with the force of a runaway train, and I staggered to regain my balance. Power saturated me from my skin down to the bone and deeper still.
From the start, the Hunk had been holding me back. It had tricked me into believing I needed it by weakening me. Then it fed me what it had stolen in the form of a boost it took credit for.
All the times I thought I required its help was a scam. All along, it had been strangling me, convincing me I was weak. It had been in my head, playing off my insecurities. And if I hadn’t been cut off from my magic, if I hadn’t felt the difference as it coursed through me, if Dad hadn’t pried the Hunk’s grip loose, I might have never realized the con job it was running on me until it was too late.
With that realization, as quick as my anger flared, it extinguished.
I don’t need you. I never needed you. Thanks for showing me that.
Lightning charred my veins, igniting tiny fires within me until I coughed ashes, and the world spun in dizzying circles.
From a great distance, Marita rasped, “Rue?”
I opened my mouth, but all that came out was smoke.
Warmth flooded my chest, and a tiny voice kept chanting my name like a prayer.
I was tired. So tired. So very tired.
But I was lighter than I ever had been.
“Her eyelids are twitching.”
“She’s breathing again.”
“I hear her heartbeat.”
A punishing crack lit up the left side of my face, and my eyes sprung open to find Marita leaning over me with her hand cocked. The persistent throbbing in my cheek led me to believe this wasn’t the first time she had tried using tough love to rouse me from…
“What happened?” I worked my jaw and winced from the ache. “How many times did you hit me?”
“The number isn’t as important as the result,” she hedged, “and the result speaks for itself.”
It all came back to me in a rush.
Bjorn. Their injuries. The Hunk.
Gratitude burning in my chest, I flung myself at Marita. “You’re alive.”
“You’re alive.” She held on tight. “I wasn’t sure there for a minute.”
What she was saying finally permeated the fog, and ice clinked in my veins. “Colby?”
“Right here.” Her voice came from behind me. “Do you think you can maybe help me?”
Slowly, I levered myself into a seated position and angled myself toward her. “What do you…?”
The scene before me made no sense.
None.
Colby sat in the dirt. A small dome of her magic wavered in the air behind her. Within the dome lay a molten glob of metal with a ruby in its center.
“It can’t be.” I reached for my throat, and my fingers brushed tender skin. “It’s gone?”
I traced my neck, marveling over this new sense of weightlessness, a relief so profound I lacked words to describe it. I was free.
Free.
“You had a seizure,” Colby explained softly. “I did too.”
“You started glowing—and screaming—and the Hunk melted across your chest. I pried it off and flung it on the ground, and it burned the hell out of me.” Marita held up her hands to show me her blistered fingertips. “Colby came out of it first, and she rushed to contain the Hunk while Derry started chest compressions to get you breathing again.”
“We were about to ask Colby to drop her ward and shift her focus to healing you.” Derry ruffled his hair. “Thank God, you woke up before we had to make that call.”
Examining the Hunk from where I sat, I couldn’t believe it. “The pendant is…”
“Amoebic?” Colby suggested, her voice brighter. “It reminds me of melted ice cream.”
“Yes.”
“We need to go after Saint.” Marita drew my attention. “As soon as you can stand, we’re moving out.”
“Dad?” A pang hit me in the center of my chest. “What happened to Dad?”
“He got stuck.” Colby’s wings drooped. “He freed me, but he couldn’t free himself.”
Murky thoughts churned as I tried catching up to them. “Stuck?”
“A spell.” Her voice wobbled. “It grabbed him like fly paper.”
I wished I could summon Mom, ask her for his location, if he was okay, but summonings only worked on vengeful spirits. Not loinnirs or familiars.
“Since Frosty the Snowgiant was the welcoming committee, I’m guessing this means the director has Saint.” Marita wet her lips. “He can’t turn Saint, right? Because that would be bad.”
“No.” I hesitated, a nebulous worry nagging at me. “Dad is the better witch.”
Narrowing her eyes on me, Marita rubbed her arms. “That pause concerns me.”
“I’m trying not to get ahead of myself.” I dipped my chin. “We don’t know if it’s the director who has him.”
“Do you think Luca has figured out Nan is dead?”
“As heavily as she relied on her? Yeah. It’s safe to assume she knows.”
Maybe not that Nan was dead but that she wasn’t coming back.
“Then it makes sense,” Derry reasoned, “that Luca would consider accelerating her timetable.”
“The director is the point of all this,” Marita countered. “Would Luca still even want your dad?”
There was a debt there. We all knew it. Maybe she decided it had finally come due.
If the director had captured Dad, I had a few options. Trades he might consider. Emphasis on might.
If Luca held Dad captive, I had a problem. I had nothing to offer her. Nothing she wanted.
Nothing except…
Back when I had assumed the Maudit Grimoire was the Proctor Grimoire, it had been a hot commodity among the rogue black witches who were loyal to Luca. But had it been a reward she offered her faithful? Or had she wanted it and been willing to give them something of equal value if they brought it to her?
After the grimoire became the Hunk, even Dad hadn’t known when he was in the grimoire’s presence. He, of all people, should have sensed his own creation. But he hadn’t. Not until Lake Pontchartrain and the coven it decimated the first time it took control of me.
Perhaps that was why the rogues had finally quit trying to steal it from me. They couldn’t sense it either. Its magical signature had become too muddled by the other components to track it singularly.
But how had Luca learned of the book’s existence? Its ties to Dad? Its value to the director?
Had she questioned Dad while he was delirious with hunger and thirst? While whatever spell or charm or curse kept Dad docile and his magic contained? Under normal circumstances, I doubt anyone could break him, but after spending decades in the dark, with his father twisting his mind, he could have been driven mad with grief and fury when they first met.
That could mean she was not only aware the grimoire existed, but she knew through a firsthand accounting by one of the authors exactly what filled those pages. Maybe having such a powerful witch—one capable of casting any of the spells in the book that caught her fancy—was Dad’s true value to her.
Maybe the vow was simply what she asked for in return because she knew it was what he wanted too. To kill his father. And when that was done, she would set him to her true purpose. There had to be one. All of this couldn’t have been for nothing but spite and vengeance. No one was that petty, right?
“Rue, we need you to weigh in here.” Marita squeezed my shoulder, helping anchor me. “What do we do with the Hunk?”
“I would suggest a pickup,” Derry said, shaking his head, “but it’s too dangerous for our courier.”
The pendant was no more, the grimoire trapped within a molten cage. But what to do with the cage? The book was clever and wicked, and I had no doubt it would figure a way out eventually. To destroy it was the goal, but I was starting to believe that wasn’t possible. For now, containment would have to do.
“I agree.” I didn’t want to admit he was right, but I wasn’t going to endanger anyone else. “I’ll carry it.”
“No.” Marita yanked me back so fast, I almost tipped over again. “You’re not touching that thing.”
“We’ll take turns carrying it.” Derry smoothed his hands down the sides of his legs, like he was searching for his pockets. “Anybody got a donation to wrap it in? We shouldn’t let it touch our skin.”
“What if you need to shift?” I shook my head. “We might need both of you on four legs for where we’re going. If you change on reflex, you’ll drop the Hunk where anyone can pick it up and use it against us.”
“I’ll carry it.” Colby fluffed out her fuzz. “I’m not afraid.”
“Sweetie,” I began, but determination radiated off her.
“I can do this. I want to do this.”
I hadn’t been the only one burned by the Hunk. Its insidious tendrils had wormed into her through our bond and caused her to almost kill Moran’s son, Peleg, while the kids had been playing. She had as much reason as I did to hate it, and her innate goodness repelled most forms of dark magic. With the Hunk not touching me, our connection broken, she ought to be safe. But ought to was a loaded phrase when it came to the Hunk.
“The second you hear a voice or sense anything out of the ordinary, you tell me.”
