Blood Cursed, page 5
She was right. But there was still a danger in using an artefact with its own magical properties, even if it wasn’t from a different magical source like Titania’s wand.
“Loki just told you about a thing that would work and is of the same source.”
“No. That isn’t a possibility and you know it.”
“It will work, though,” HBG whispered. “Trust that she will be able to carry the burden of it.”
“No. There has to be another way.” And maybe the wand was it. “Okay,” he shouted at Rinna over the increasing wails of the entity as it spread over more and more of the library ceiling. “You get the wand. I’ll try to hold this at bay. Hurry.”
He shoved his mask back on his face as she ran towards the Fae section then turned and threw up a shield, trying to stop the entity from encroaching any further into the library.
The entity recoiled as his shield pushed out. A little surprised, he breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe it wasn’t going to be as difficult as he’d heard it would be to push this thing back into the book that had been its prison for centuries.
The entity surged, then pushed forward against his shield. Gritting his teeth, he held against it, channelling more of his power into the shield. The entity pulled back then came at him again. He held it back, but he knew he couldn’t do this for long. He would need help, and a lot of it, to not only keep this thing contained, but to put it back where it belonged. So they would need the wand.
He just hoped Rinna was right. If the wand didn’t work to mesh their magic in a controlled manner, it could be disastrous. But maybe not as disastrous as going it alone without any channelling medium.
“You are soulmates. Your powers are meant to mesh together.”
“That isn’t how magic works. Not when it comes from completely different sources.” It was an inviolable law of magic – or at least, that’s how he had been taught.
“You were taught wrong. Korinna’s instincts are right on this.”
“I hope so.” He really didn’t want to explain why the library and their house was a crumbling ruin when Bas and Jules got back.
The entity chose that moment to lash out at his shield. Sparks flew from the contact and he grunted. It was strong. But so was he. He pushed back. It screamed but didn’t retreat this time, just lashed out again.
His shield flickered for a moment but he pushed more power into it; it held.
Zeus! He really needed to practice his defensive and offensive spells; he was rusty – no wonder, given fighting wasn’t really something he’d done a lot of as a cupid. But he’d studied it with everyone else, so he knew some, and there was one in the Eleusinian Mysteries Grimoire that he’d wanted to try. Now seemed like a good time.
Holding his shield with one hand, he made the signs of an air sigil, infused it with magic, then blasted it out through his shield at the entity.
White light surrounded it. It screamed and writhed and drew back.
Light began to glimmer in the chandelier above him.
He pushed harder, filling the spell with more power. The entity drew back, spitting and hissing.
He’d done it. Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe they wouldn’t need to use the wand or try to mesh their powers together.
The entity let out a mighty roar and surged forward, hitting the spell, breaking it into a thousand pieces.
“Fuck!” Tamuel staggered under the force and almost lost control of his shield but held on just in time. Zeus! Korinna better hurry up, because he didn’t know how much longer he was going to be able to hold it back – especially now he’d made it angry.
Light flashed behind her as she searched the shelves. Where the Hells was the wand? It had been here when Tam had shown it to her months ago. But the place where it was housed was empty. Damn! She’d forgotten it was supposed to have a mind of its own and often went visiting other Fae artefacts.
A roar, followed by an explosion, shook the shelves around her. A shower of rock and soil fell from the ceiling. Hells. She had to get back to Tam. He couldn’t hold that thing by himself.
But without something to help channel their magics, even with her control spell, they would have to work separately – would that be enough? Another roar. Another explosive shockwave.
Damn. She turned, about to run back. The wand rolled out from under one stack and across the floor in front of her.
“Yes!” She dived for it, almost landing nose-first into the floor in her enthusiasm, her knees and palms smarting as she skidded across the carpet. The wand buzzed and jumped in her hand, rubbing against the carpet burn on her palm, its magic sensing hers but bucking against it.
She held on tight, but rather than forcing it into submission, said, “Please. I need your help.” She filled her mind with an image of the entity swallowing the light and the book they had to get it back into. “You helped Titania with something similar. Now we need you to help us work together.”
The wand buzzed and hummed, moving as if to jump out of her hand.
A spark of green magic, like a vine, came out of her wrist and wrapped around the end of the wand, smearing a little of her blood on it. The wand glowed, the humming getting louder, then it fell still and silent.
She stared at it. Panic rose inside her. Blood magic again? Had she lost control? Was the spell not working?
No. It was there, humming through her veins as strongly as before. Then what had just happened? Maybe it had something to do with the nature of the control spell – it was the same colour as the magic-vine that had drawn her blood and held her to the Eleusinian Mysteries Grimoire. Yes, that must be it. But why had it drawn her blood? And why had that quieted the wand, making it ready to do her bidding?
She knew she should put the wand down, not use it. But its power thrummed through her, stronger after her blood-tinged magic had touched it; and it felt good. Or, maybe not good, but something that could fight the evil entity at least when bound with Tam’s power.
More light flashed from where Tam battled the entity.
She had no choice. She had to try the wand.
Turning, she raced back the way she’d come. “I’m coming, Tam. Hold on,” she yelled – pointless really given her voice was muffled by the mask.
Then she was beside him – she must have run faster than she’d ever run before.
Holding out the wand, she yelled, “Here! I have to be the channel though. It’s already bonded to me.”
He blinked, as if surprised, but then joined her in holding the wand. “Holy crap!” he said, as power sparked between them before quickly settling.
Immediately, his shield strengthened, sparking with a green and gold hue alongside his bluey-green. “Push,” he said through gritted teeth.
She lifted their joined hands and pushed their magic through the wand. The shield pressed forward, forcing the entity back, but even so, she could tell it wouldn’t be enough. “It’s not going to work,” she yelled. “We need to surround the entity, whittle it down.” But she didn’t know any offensive spells – it had never really been part of her training all those years ago, or something she’d spent time researching. She stupidly hadn’t even thought of that as something she needed, her focus entirely on finding a way to control her power and mesh it with Tam’s. But of course, they would need defensive and offensive spells to fight Clodia. It was something she needed to rectify.
Thankfully, Tam had more training to pull from. “I tried something earlier but didn’t have enough power to keep it up. We should have more than enough now.”
“Do it.”
“No, you’ll have to do it given you’ve got the control. I’ll write the sigil, but you’ll have to power it.”
“Okay.”
He drew the sigil in the air. As he did so, something clicked in her mind – she’d seen this. She knew what it was. A spell from the Eleusinian Mysteries Grimoire.
A feeling of rightness filled her, like she’d found home after being lost for so many years. Her power leaped against the barriers of the control spell, wanting out, but she gritted her teeth and tamped down. Immediately, it settled, ready to do her bidding in the way she wanted it to.
The control spell was good.
As Tam finished writing the sigil in the air, she touched the tip of the wand to it and pushed their combined powers into it.
It lit up the entity, showing its edges, the dull fog-grey of its eyes, the snapping teeth that had been hidden in shadow until now. It hissed and roared but could do nothing to fight the light that was growing, pushing it back.
They were doing it! She threw a grin at Tam. He grinned back.
They had this. This was how they’d fight Clodia and win the day. Finally, with her magic under control, she knew they could do the task the HBG had set them. Hope and certainty flared inside them.
And with them, her magic.
A slicing sensation made her grimace and she glanced down at the hand holding the wand. A blood-tinged green frond had emerged from her wrist to wrap around the wand – she glanced at Tam to see if he’d noticed, but thankfully, his attention was fully on the entity.
Before she could even attempt to call it back – Why would you want to? a voice whispered in her mind – the blood, along with the magic in the frond, sank into the wood of the wand. Power surged and the light exploded.
The magical shock-wave hit the dark entity. Its moaning turned to screams. The wind roared and the darkness bucked against the wave. But the wave was inexorable and pushed it back, back, scooping up the tendrils that tried to escape its force.
She tried to pull back the surge of power – it had to be evil given it was created by her magic mixed with her blood – but Tam shouted, “No. Don’t. It’s working. And the wand is holding it together.”
Korinna’s palm burned where the wand touched it, and from the grimace on Tam’s face, it was burning him too, but she did as he said, letting the enormity of both of their powers flow through her and into the wand. He was right. It was working, pushing the entity back, back. Maybe you could only fight true evil like this with something just as dark. But she didn’t have to like it and she vowed to make certain it didn’t happen again.
The entity was now the size of a large bear rearing in the doorway that led to the Black Magic and Dangerous Books section from which it was trying to escape.
She pushed more power through the wand. The entity folded in on itself, now the size of a large dog. Still, it fought them, holding on with dark tentacles to the edges of the door. Tam opened himself up further, offering more of his power; she used it.
The entity lost its hold on the doorway and tumbled back into the room. As it moved, she spied the book it was trying to escape from lying open on the floor, a thread of darkened fog wavering up out of it the only thing still holding the entity to the book.
It was frayed and looked like it might snap at any moment.
“Hurry,” Tam yelled, obviously seeing the same thing.
She pushed more power through the wand. It began to smoulder, the tip bending under the pressure. But she didn’t let go – couldn’t let go. With a yell, she dug down deep inside, pulling on more of her magic and channelling it into Titania’s wand, then gave the entity a final blast. The light surrounded it, folding it down into the size of a ball, then shoved it into the pages of the open book. The book shuddered, spun, then snapped closed.
A roar, followed by silence so thick it was almost smothering.
Tam let go of her hand and grabbed her up. “We did it,” he said, giving her a smacking kiss and spinning her around.
She laughed with him, but when he pulled back, her laughter died.
The wand was a blackened twig in her hand. A whimpering twig.
“Hells. Did we do that?” Tam said, grimacing.
“Yes,” she lied. “Our powers combined must have been too much for it.” But it hadn’t been their powers combined that had done the most damage. That had only occurred when she’d used blood magic to further power the spell.
The good intent of working with the wand had been perverted, bending the wand and its magic to her will, just as dark sorcerers did.
Thankfully Tam had been too busy to notice. She had no idea how she could explain the use of such magic to him. She couldn’t even explain it to herself. I’ll never use it again, though.
Why not? It worked. And it felt glorious.
She shoved the whisper from her subconscious away, throwing up a wall in her mind between it and her. She couldn’t listen to it. It was madness to consider using it again. Despite the fact it had helped her twice, it was still evil. But she wasn’t. She’d spent her entire life trying to do good and make up for the one horrible thing she’d done. There were many times she could have given into darkness and used its thrall to take the easy way out of the burdens she carried, but she hadn’t. She was a good person. And she wasn’t about to change that now. Especially not now she had Tam in her life.
Hells, he couldn’t know what she’d done. She’d do anything to make certain he never found out.
She looked down at the blackened wand in her hand. She had to try to make it better too. “Maybe Bas can heal it?”
“I’m sure he can. Let’s take it back—”
The wand jumped out of her hand and flew down the row towards where she’d found it.
She went to chase after it, but Tam’s hand on her arm held her back. “Let it go. I’ll get Bas and Jules to look for it when they get back. It’s unlikely to come back for us now.”
He was right. But still, she hated that she’d hurt the wand like that. That it seemed to be frightened of her – although no wonder.
Tam cupped her face, then flinched. She grabbed his hand. “Let me have a look at that.” His palm was burned, the skin angry and red, blisters already forming. A response to the darkness of the magic she’d used?
“It’s fine,” he said. “It can’t be worse than yours.”
But when he turned her hand over, there was only a little redness and no sign of blood or where the magic frond had burst out of her skin.
“What? But I felt it burn,” she said, turning her hand this way and that – but there was no burn. Nothing to explain the sensation she’d endured when using both their powers through the wand, boosted by her blood.
What did this mean? Nothing good, she was certain.
“Maybe you didn’t get burned because you were the centre-point of the magic.”
“Yes. Yes, that must be it,” she said, grabbing onto his suggestion with too much enthusiasm and earning a strange look from him. She forced a smile to her face. “It did feel rather odd.”
“But kind of amazing too. Especially that burst at the end,” he said, returning her smile. “I’ve never felt so alive.”
“Y-yes. M-me too.”
“It’s something we’ll have to investigate when we try other artefacts.”
“Other artefacts?”
“Of course,” he said, pointing towards where the wand had disappeared. “You were right about an artefact of power allowing us to channel our powers together through it. This was a success.”
“I wouldn’t call it that. Look what I did to the wand.”
“We did to the wand.”
“And what about your hand?”
“A learner’s injury. Bas will heal it in a jiffy.” He flashed an encouraging smile. “All in all, not too bad given it was our first time channelling our power together. I expected worse.” He cupped her face with his uninjured hand. “We did it, Rinna. We found the way forward.”
He was right. Except … “I doubt the wand will let us use it again.”
“I’m sure there’s other artefacts like it we can use. Maybe one even more closely aligned with our powers that won’t burn up like the wand did. This is it, Rinna. You’ve found the solution that will let us free the HBG spirit, open the Void and take care of Clodia once and for all.”
“Gods, I hope you’re right.” And that they would work without her having to use her blood to fully power-up again.
He kissed her and pulled her in for a hug. “I am. You’ll see. Stop worrying.”
She nodded, then keen to change the conversation, looked back at the Black Magic and Dangerous Books section. “Who do you think let that out?”
“One of the interns probably didn’t close up properly. It wouldn’t be the first time. They’ve been getting slack ever since Jules lost her allergy to magic. Don’t worry. I’ll have a word with them. It won’t happen again. Although, right now, I’m bloody glad it did.”
She nodded, although she couldn’t be as excited as he was. Especially given a dark foreboding crawled over her as they went about cleaning up the mess the entity had made. A foreboding she couldn’t shake.
Chapter
Six
They ate dinner in silence. Usually they chatted about everything and anything, but somehow, every time he went to try to talk about what had happened and their plan, one look at Rinna as she moved her food around on her plate listlessly had the words dying on his lips.
It was probably nothing more than exhaustion. The spell they’d done on the entity had been huge and she’d been the fulcrum for it. “Perhaps you should go to bed soon,” he suggested into the silence.
She looked up at him for the first time since they’d sat down. “Um … yeah. I think I might. I’m pretty tired.” Her fork clattered to the plate and she got up without another word and left the table.
“I’ll see you up there,” he said to the empty doorway.
“That’s strange,” the HBG said.
He picked up their plates and threw the leftovers into the bin. “I thought she’d be excited. We finally have a plan.”
“Maybe she senses it’s not the right plan to use any old artefact. Tell her about the ring.”
“No. It’s not the right time.” He put the plates in the dishwasher. “She’s probably just tired.”
“You’re not. You’re wired.”
