Trouble with the Cursed, page 46
“Go!” I all but hissed, breaking my circle and shoving Stef to the door. “Get to the church. Help Getty. I’ll see you in three days. If I’m not back by then, tell Trent I love him.” Desperately.
“Rachel, I’m sorry,” Stef began to babble, nose runny and eyes wet.
“Go!” I got to my feet, and the woman awkwardly scrabbled up and ran for the door, hitting it hard to stumble into the night. I saw a flash of dark parking lot as the door swung shut. Shaking, I turned to Hodin and Al.
“Hodin!” I shouted, and the demon spun, his hands dripping green and yellow. Al cut his next curse short, and the two of them stared at me, one in bloodstained red silk, the other in leather. There was a new burn-edged hole in the ceiling clear through to the upstairs floor, and I winced. Sorry, Pike. Maybe you could put in a firepole. “I believe the deal was Stef for my password?” Pulse hammering, I shoved another table away to make more room.
“Don’t!” Al exclaimed, his brow furrowed, but the more smut he had, the better both our chances of surviving the next five minutes in the ley line. The only place to get it would be the vault. But that meant Al would need reason to fight Hodin. And for that, I had to give Hodin a chance.
“Jariathjackjunisjumoke!” I cried out as I shoved another table to the edges of the room. “Take it, you soul-sucking, traitorous, know-nothing hack!” I almost spit at him. “Take it, and you will lose. You hear me, Hodin? You will lose everything!”
Al’s face was riven, his hands clenching into fists as Hodin stood before me, his brow furrowed quizzically. “What kind of a summoning name is that?” Hodin said.
My face burned. “It’s mine,” I said. “You are a worthless, cowardly—”
“Rachel!” Al shouted, his red robe billowing as he yanked me clear of Hodin’s thrown ring. It hit the floor with a ping and burst, a bubble of energy rising up in green and yellow, burning everything within.
Pulse hammering, I pressed back into Al. “This is going to cost you everything, itchy witch,” Al muttered, a wisp of smoke curling up from his already charred hem, smelling of burnt amber.
“It’s going to give me everything,” I said, and Al’s grip on me tightened. “I—”
“Move!” Al shouted, and we sprang apart, him going one way, me the other as another ring hit the floor at our feet. A larger circle sprang up. It rolled after me, and I shoved a chair at it, horrified when the bubble enveloped it and the chair seemed to expand, then contracted, and then exploded. Yelping, I ducked below a table as shrapnel peppered the floor.
Hodin stood tall over me, an unfocused, breathless expression on his face. “You made your last mistake.”
Oh, if only I was that lucky.
“Get out!” Al shouted, gesturing wildly. “He has access to the vault.”
“I need—” I started, my words faltering when Hodin’s gaze sharpened on me. Oh . . . shit. “Kill me, and there’s nothing to stop them from putting you in a bottle,” I said, and Hodin’s smile became ugly.
“If I kill you, they won’t dare try,” he said, and I felt myself pale as his aura seemed to grow darker, shifting into the visible spectrum.
Al’s jaw clenched. “He’s in,” he said as he inched closer to me. “We have lost.”
“We have not!” I insisted. “I need him to—hey!” I gasped as Al yanked me close, the tingle of his aura rubbing against mine like pinpricks as his protection circle snapped into place around us. I jumped at a heavy thump, my attention going up to see Hodin’s curse snaking over our heads, trying to get through Al’s bubble. A ring of floor around us was smoking, and my mouth went dry.
Al’s lip curled as he looked at the floor. The curse was trying to eat its way in to us. It would, eventually. “You need him to what?” Al said, his voice oddly muffled. The air was stuffy, and I was sure I could smell burnt amber, though it might be the smoking floor. “Hurry, Rachel,” he prompted. “There are curses in the vault to rip through the best protection circle, and he will find them. You need him to what?”
I pushed back and stared at him. He was listening to me?
My pulse hammered. “If I’m going to bind him into a tulpa created in a ley line, you need all the smut you can get to insulate us while I’m doing it. What you have right now isn’t going to cut it.”
Al’s brow furrowed . . . then his eyes watching me from over his glasses widened in understanding. “You want the smut the vault curses levy . . .” he said, starting to laugh. “The vault . . . yes. There is no better place for dark magic and the smut they put on you. You need smut? I will get you smut, my itchy witch.”
My knees felt like water. Above Al, Hodin’s curse burned and coiled against Al’s protective bubble. Al glanced at it, took a breath, and then carefully maneuvered himself to stand between me and Hodin.
“Get clear if you can. This is going to be messy,” he said.
But my smile of victory faltered as his expression seemed to go vacant and a horrifying ugliness seeped into him, prickling like black ice against my skin. He had accessed the vault, opening his mind to the curses the demons had created thousands of years ago in their war with the elves. He knew where every last ugly magic waited with the same surety that I knew where the flowers I needed grew in my garden. And he knew well enough to perhaps save my ass.
“Capax infiniti!” Al shouted, and I jumped as a burst of energy exploded his protection bubble outward, taking Hodin’s curse with it. Shadow curled up from his feet, wreathing Al in smoke and flame. His head grew heavy, and his eyes like pits. There was death in them, and anger, and bitter, bitter desire to cause pain. It wasn’t Al. It was the echo of the soul of whoever had made that curse, now staining him.
“What have I asked you to do, Al?” I whispered, and Al turned to me, his lifted chin telling me to get behind him. I hadn’t known that by using the stored curses he took on the pain their makers had felt.
“Coniunctis viribus!” Hodin shouted, and Al flung up a hand, easily absorbing the curse even as his hand grew dark with it. Al had fought the war that his brother had sat out, and the older demon laughed, long and hard, magic wreathing his fingers and Latin spilling from his lips. I shuddered as I felt a massive curse unroll in him, crashing into Hodin to send him reeling back. Sash furling, Al threw another, and Hodin barely got his countercurse between it and him, sending the combined forces to hit the wall. Black goo coated the wall, chairs, and tables, and then they shrank in on themselves and vanished with a terrifying crunch of wood and stone.
My lips parted as the entire wall vanished. Night air and the sound of distant traffic rolled in. My breath seemed to choke in me, and I dove for cover behind a fallen table.
“Ad utrumque paratus,” Al intoned, his fisted hands at his middle parting. I felt myself pale as a sparking bar of energy formed between them, glowing red and gold with his aura, dripping with evil. My lips parted when the bar broke in two, leaving Al with a blue-flame sword in one hand, a black-flame dagger in the other. They were curses made solid, and my breath shook as I exhaled. You can do that?
“Please don’t run, little brother.” Al stepped forward, shadows clinging to him like death itself. “My friends are thirsty after so long a nap. This one,” he said as he lifted the glowing sword made of blue light, “is Duco. And this”—he held up the smaller, wickedly jagged dagger—“is Quaere. I haven’t lived so long that I have forgotten how to wield them.”
“Demon swords don’t kill demons, they kill elves,” Hodin said as he stood before us, his long face pale.
Al laughed, the low sound rumbling about the walls until it echoed into the empty parking lot. “Why would I harm you? I’m a distraction while my student puts you in a bottle.”
“Hinc et inde!” Hodin exclaimed, a wash of shadow boiling out from nowhere as a bubble formed about me.
I looked up, hunching into myself at the sudden lack of light and noise. It was a death circle, and I was in it. “Al!” I shouted as it began to shrink, then yelped when a burst of gold exploded the black into a thousand shards. Free, I backpedaled, feet shuffling to avoid the pieces of the curse making holes in the floor as they shrank into nothing and vanished. Little patches of my robe smoked, and I used my sash to pat them out. Son of a mother moss wipe . . .
My attention flicked to Al as I extinguished the last, thankful even as he swung his sword to drive Hodin away with bellowed, gleeful shouts in time with his swings. If he hadn’t broken the circle, I would be dead. Smut wreathed them both, making them into shadows. It clung to Al, spinning with him as he moved, turning his tattered robe into a veritable wash of haze and smoke.
“De morume, ta na shay!” Hodin gasped, and Al cried out, falling to a knee and writhing as his sword hit the oak floor and vanished.
“Hey!” I stood, yanking the line deep into me, and Hodin’s head turned as if on a swivel. “You don’t want to bring the Goddess into this,” I said as I shoved a chair out from between us. “We’re besties.”
Hodin spit blood, breathing hard as he stared malevolently. Al had propped himself up on an elbow, brow lowered as his lungs heaved. His hand was a bloody mess, and he couldn’t focus yet. Pissed, I paced forward until he was at my feet.
My knees shook. Al’s new smut hadn’t yet soaked in, eddying about him like an ill wind.
“I am in the vault. You have lost,” Hodin said, and I pulled myself straighter.
“And you have made the mistake of thinking that means anything,” I said, my thought to trap him in a tulpa-shaped bottle fading. “Ta na shay—”
“Alea iacta est!” Hodin shouted.
“Rachel,” Al whispered, his head bowed as he reached out.
We had fought together as one before, and trusting him, my hand smacked into his. I gasped at the expected jolt of our strengths joining. Shaking, I pulled the ley line’s energy into us, doubling the force we could wield. An unending torrent poured through both of us, ordering itself into a heinous action as Al gave it direction.
“In se magna ruunt!” I screamed for him, the vault’s curse burning as it left me. My hand flamed, and my arm shook as the curse arced from me to Hodin, enveloping his hand, already glowing with power.
Hodin’s curse exploded in his grip to send the demon flying across the room. The walls shook and the lights popped, overwhelmed. It was only the burning circle that lit the dark.
“You okay?” I said as I let go. My shoulders slumped as my strength seemed to halve, and Al nodded, slow as he got up. His right arm hung useless, but as he felt the dagger in his left, he smiled. I could feel the smut the curse had left on me, see it wreathing my hands, and I smiled back.
“You can’t help her!” Hodin shouted, frustrated, and Al chuckled as he wiped the blood from his lip, rubbing his fingers together and turning the red smear into a ruby dust that fell glittering to the floor.
“I’m not helping her.” Al looked at Quaere, his desire to use the dagger obvious. “She doesn’t need me to capture you. I’m simply keeping her alive while she does it.”
Jaw clenched, Hodin took a step away, not in fear, but calculation.
“You can’t best us both, little brother,” Al mocked, flipping Quaere into the air and catching it.
Run, I thought, needing Hodin to flee into a line. Only there could I catch him. Run like the coward you are.
And finally, Hodin did.
“Snag him!” Al shouted as Hodin vanished, and I staggered, feeling my body shift to thought as Al shoved me into the ley line after him.
I floundered for the breath of a molecule spin, the roar of the line harsh as it oriented on me within the screaming energy flow. It burned, and I let it, needing to find Hodin before I could circle my thoughts and shut out the harsh discord. But it was my smut that burned, not me.
There, Al thought, the scent of burnt amber choking my memory. Al was with me, and it gave me strength.
Together we found Hodin, his anger and frustration a bright beacon of black in the shimmering fire of time itself.
Circle him! Al thought as I felt Hodin begin to shift his aura to slip from the line.
But I was faster. Gotcha, I thought as I snapped a bubble around both of us and the harsh friction caused by the sensory burn eased. Al! I shouted, and he enveloped us in another bubble, as light as gray gossamer, a nightmare of a daydream that was hardly there. Unnoticed.
That is, until Hodin modulated his aura to step from the ley line and nothing happened. My aura ruled his, and my aura hadn’t shifted. It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it, but the last time I had tried on my own, I had burned my synapses to a crisp, skidding through space as I forced my way out.
Fool! Hodin thought, and I shoved my satisfaction deep into hiding as Hodin dropped his protection circle and sent a blast of hate-powered line energy straight into my chi.
Hey! I yelped, soaking in the force like a reverse power pull, spindling it in my mind as fast as he poured it into me. Ow! Knock it off! I exclaimed as he turned to burning my surface thoughts, singeing me.
You can’t destroy me by holding me in a ley line, Hodin thought as he drew back and the ugly sensation of his hatred faded. You will suffer more than me, and when you die, your synapses charred to a twisted, unusable chaos, I will survive.
Duh, I thought smugly. But that’s not what I’m doing.
Hodin’s confidence faltered as he realized I was painlessly holding us in the line. Al was shielding me, the agony of it muted by his vault-heavy smut. With a new panic, Hodin lunged his barbed hatred at me, digging his thoughts deep and twisting.
Al! I thought, and his presence grew, grasping Hodin about his theoretical throat and pulling him from my soul with the sensation of raking claws.
Work fast, Al thought, and then he was gone, rolling Hodin’s psyche in a deluge of ugly memories to confuse and bewilder him.
As you wish, brother! Hodin’s awareness crashed into mine, and then he was gone again, distracted.
How am I going to do this? I thought to myself as I felt them tumble about in one of Al’s memories, the three of us nothing more than thought, lost in a line as Al’s smut burned.
But like most things, tulpas begin with emotion. I felt helpless, frustrated, angry, afraid that I was not enough for the task. The ugly slurry roiling in me was not unfamiliar. I’d felt this before. And with a ping that shook me to my core, the memory of me sitting at my mother’s kitchen table rose up to become my world. My father had died; I felt helpless. No one would tell me why; I felt frustration. I had tried to save him and failed; I had not been enough.
I cried out as Hodin freed himself from Al long enough to fling a hate-filled thought at me, burning: I remembered crying. My thoughts made a little push, shrinking me down from Al and Hodin as if I was smaller than a hidden idea. From somewhere, I felt Al chuckle even as the sensation of his synapses burning drifted to me.
A calm satisfaction rose from my core. I could sense Al fighting Hodin. Al could not hold him forever. I didn’t need forever. I was Rachel Morgan, and I could do . . . anything here in my mindscape.
I dropped deeper into myself, pulling on the emotions that Hodin had instilled, feelings that had dogged me too long. Inadequacy. Guilt. Wanting to be strong enough to save those I loved. Pain when I had proved too weak. They were all old emotions. I’d felt them before, and I knew the strength found in surmounting them. I just needed to . . . remember how.
What? Hodin thought as suddenly the clear nothing of my thoughts shimmered, became bright, and then began to settle. In my mind, imagined walls became solid. A ceiling, a floor, a window, a door. Cupboards and chairs. A Formica table. The ticking of a shifty-eyed cat clock.
We’re still in a line? Hodin thought, and then suddenly he was there as well, standing in my mother’s kitchen as I remembered the dents in the table—and they appeared. What is this?
It’s me, I thought as I found myself appearing in my memory. I was my teenage self, gawky and awkward in jeans and a green T-shirt, flip-flops on my bony feet. I sighed at my frizzy, short hair and the scars on my arms where the nurses had been careless. Turning, I smiled at the faded curtains, and the bluebell print appeared, complete with the splashes of tomato paste from when Robbie and I had argued over who was going to wash and who would dry. Water stains decorated the ceiling, and one of the cupboard doors hung askew. The walls were yellow and the linoleum was faded. The sink dripped into a rust stain, and the memory of pixy wings hummed at the open window, curtains shifting in the night breeze.
It was my mother’s kitchen made real, and panicking, Hodin tried to flee, but my thoughts held his, and he could not.
No, you don’t, little brother, Al thought, his presence suddenly beside mine, his still-bleeding hand catching the image of Hodin by the shoulder and practically throwing him into one of the kitchen’s metal chairs.
Let me out of the line, you filthy whelp! Hodin exclaimed, and bellowing, Al punched Hodin square in the face. The younger demon went tumbling, slamming into the wall before Al grabbed him by the throat and flung him into the outdated stove.
Yes, it was all in my thoughts, but that didn’t make it any less real.
Finish it, Rachel! Al thought jubilantly, then he attacked Hodin, a black flame seeming to flicker about his robe’s hem as he beat Hodin into a cowering ball with the scent of char and fire. It was a battle that both was and wasn’t, and I stood in my mother’s kitchen, adding the hum and click of the old refrigerator, the sound of the TV in the other room. I remembered a pot of tomato soup on the stove into existence, and Hodin threw it at Al. I put the scent of burning toast in the air, and Hodin set the bread on fire.
But there was nothing Hodin could do that I could not mend with a thought, and as Al distracted Hodin, I added a splotch of paint on the window frame, a dent in the wall, the spelling bowls my mother hid from me behind the flour. And finally, with a ping, I had it. It was real, as far as real ever was.
