Runaway Magic, page 23
A knock on the door drew Hester away from where she was perched. With slow, lazy strides she went to the door, a queen in her own castle. She opened the side door a crack and called out, “Stella! Do you have what I need?”
Cym could just make out his aunt’s quiet tone as she said, “You’re going to have to come see this for yourself.”
Hester looked back at Cym. “I’ll be just a moment, dear one.” She blew a kiss to Cym’s one-fingered salute and closed and locked the door behind her.
Cym didn’t feel as though the lying thing had worked very well. He would need to practice more if he ever got free. Though, in hindsight, it rarely worked out for the protagonist in any of the books he’d read, so he wasn’t sure he should waste any more time developing that skill.
Rather than getting all worked up over the potential of having his soul eaten, he decided to figure out how to get out of his smelly crate. It was really beginning to get to him.
As he examined the structure, he specifically chose not to think about how his family might track down Fourteen. As long as Fourteen kept his armor on, any spellwork done would be fruitless. As Cym poked and prodded every screw and bolt he could find, he also specifically didn’t wonder about how angry Fourteen would be at him right now.
If he could even be angry. It was possible, without Cym around, Fourteen would regress back to what he had been before—a mindless killer. It should probably bother Cym more that Fourteen had killed a countless number of people, but it didn’t. He knew it wasn’t Fourteen’s choice.
As Cym was busy failing to not think about Fourteen, he found a bolt holding one of the bottom corners of the crate together that wiggled a bit when he poked at it. The problem was that it was rusty, stripped, and wedged deep inside the bolt hole. There was nothing for him to hold onto. The bars were spaced closely together, but upon further examination, he found a spot he might be able to fit his hand through. It was nearly a foot from where he needed to reach, but the alternative was sitting on his ass and being a half-frozen, helpless loser in a stinky cage.
He squeezed his fingers through the bars, scraping lines of skin off his hand as it caught on bolt after bolt. Nausea swirled in his stomach, reminding him how much he hated pain. He told his stomach to stuff it and kept pushing.
Slowly, his arm followed his hand, and tears burned in his eyes as the bolts tore deeper into his flesh the farther he pushed. When he finally reached his goal, he had left a good deal of his skin behind and was panting from strain and the urge to vomit.
Gripping the nut as tightly as his blood-slicked fingers could manage, he worked at the rusty object. It looked like he was well on his way to giving his creepy Grandma a damaged body. He wondered if there were spells to counteract the effects of tetanus.
Once he had the nut free from the bolt, he had to push the bolt back through the hole, but he didn’t have the leverage necessary. He reached and twisted until he heard a pop and felt a sharp pain lance down him arm.
Creepy Grandma was going to love that development.
Cym gritted his teeth and continued, ignoring the unstoppable tears springing into his eyes from the pain. Whatever he had done to himself had given him the reach he needed, but it had made his fingers go numb—ignoring any and all orders he was sending it. It took time, but he managed to flop his hand back and forth until it knocked the bolt far enough for him to pull it out from the other side. He eased his mangled hand back inside the crate, losing even more skin in the process. Gingerly, he placed the useless hand on his lap and tried to ignore it, focusing instead on inspecting the crate to see what his sacrifice had bought him.
He put his foot to the corner and pushed with everything he had, gaining himself a four-inch opening. When ten minutes of pushing earned him less than an additional inch of space and a reminder that his feet weren’t doing great either, he bit down on a howl of frustration. There was no point in drawing the attention of whoever was outside guarding the door. If Creepy Grandma was to be believed, most of his family wanted everything to keep going as planned.
At least it wasn’t all of them. Considering their interaction earlier, Creepy Grandma must have been keeping up the façade with Sterling. Cym was momentarily warmed at the possibility that his baby brother might not want him dead. If Cym could find a way to contact Sterling, maybe he could convince his brother to help.
Cym’s attention went to the door as it opened.
“Look what we found!” Hester announced gaily as she breezed back into the garage. “Please put him over there.” She pointed at the floor next to Cym’s cage.
Cym’s uncle Grant came through the door and took up a position by Hester. He avoided eye contact with Cym and watched silently as two young men dragged a body into the room. Hope shattered as Cym watched them drop Fourteen on the floor beside him.
“You should see your face!” Hester crowed triumphantly. “You really are the worst liar ever. If I hadn’t known he meant something to you before, there’s no doubt about it now. Are you going to cry? Please do, I’d like to see that.” She clapped her hands like a small child anticipating a special treat.
A guttural cry tore from his throat as a single thought resonated through his entire being.
How fucking dare they?
After Cym had sacrificed Fourteen’s trust and his own well-being to get the man away from a dangerous situation of Cym’s own making, how dare they drag Fourteen back here?
He began to thrash wildly in the crate, kicking and straining at the damaged corner of the cage mindlessly, screaming like a wild thing.
“Oh for fuck’s sake… Cym, stop that, right now.” A welcome voice in long-suffering tones broke through Cym’s rage.
Cym stopped dead and looked at where Fourteen was now kneeling, hands bound before him, but looking none the worse for the wear.
“This would have worked better if your stupid family thought I was unconscious, but I’m not going to let you damage yourself over this.” Fourteen frowned, as he took in Cym’s blood-stained, mangled arm. “What did they do to you?” His voice sapped what little heat there was from the room.
“He did that to himself, champion.” Hester clucked her tongue in disapproval at Cym. “Did you really think I wouldn’t want your body if you injured it? This is nothing—a day wearing a few spellpatches at most.”
Cym ignored her. “Fourteen, you can’t—”
“Don’t!” Fourteen’s voice rang out sharply. “Just… don’t, okay?”
Hester clapped her hands again and twirled around in a circle in delight. “Oh yes! Stella told me about this. Does that beautiful man really have to do everything you tell him to? Cymbeline, you naughty fox, I can’t wait to play with him once I’m you.” She wiggled in anticipation.
Nausea returned in full force.
Cymbeline. That was his name. His full name. It had been so long since he’d been called anything other than The Boy that he’d only been able to give Fourteen a mangled version of it. Hearing it come out of the mouth of the freak show in front of him sounded foreign and wrong.
“Over my dead body, bitch.” Cym would choose a reenactment of what he’d done at the cemetery over letting this monster have control of Fourteen.
During the interplay with his grandmother, Fourteen had crawled over to inspect Cym’s arm. “We need to get the bleeding stopped,” he stated. “This is worse than it looks. He’ll die soon without help.”
Cym was probably more occupied than he should be with wondering exactly how mad Fourteen was with him versus whether or not he was embellishing Cym’s condition for a tactical reason. Fourteen wasn’t exactly being gentle with his examination, but he wasn’t being rough either. It was clear, however, that he was taking extra care not to make skin contact or touch Cym any more than necessary.
“I’m not an idiot,” Hester said in an exasperated tone. “No one here is going anywhere near Cymbeline until we figure out how to control him. If you want to patch him up, that’s your business.”
“Your people took everything I had. I need supplies.”
“Then I guess you’re out of luck. Why don’t you do us all a favor and fill us in on how you can stay free of his magic? Is it a norm thing?”
One of the young men in the room piped up. “When I questioned the people in the boy’s last apartment building, they all showed signs of being affected by him. If it’s a norm thing, it’s not common.”
“Cym, I need you to promise me you won’t tell me to do anything for the next few minutes.” Fourteen whispered under the cover of the debate going on overhead.
“You can’t—”
“Promise!” he insisted harshly.
“Fine.” Cym choked down his protest. It was foolish of him to keep railing against what was happening. Unless Cym decided to blow up the entire building and them along with it, he was going to need Fourteen to get them out.
“I’m holding you to that.” Fourteen’s bound and gloved hand squeezed Cym’s briefly.
“I don’t know how you think you’re getting us out of here. If my whole family is here, you’re looking at fighting off at least a hundred people.”
“I know what the situation is.” Fourteen came to his feet in a graceful motion. “Is it possible for you to accept that you might not?”
“And what do you think you’re—” Grant’s demand was cut off by a boot to his throat.
“Oh for Vis’ sake!” Hester exclaimed. “This is ridiculous.”
Grant was one of the few members of Cym’s family who had only a small amount of magic to call his own. It made sense that his grandmother had him in the room. Out of everyone in the family, Grant was the only one who had any self-defense training. Cym would have been worried for Fourteen, but it only took a few seconds to show him that fear would have been wasted.
Hester was dispassionate in the face of her great-something-grand nephew quickly losing ground to Fourteen. “You can’t fight all of us, champion. It isn’t like we didn’t prepare for this. Did you think we wouldn’t be suspicious when you showed up on our tracking spell? You just stood there and let us take you. I mean, we aren’t morons.” Despite her nonchalant words, she began edging away from the fight.
“You just let them take you? What is wrong with you?” Exhaustion swept over Cym at his stupidity. “Now we’re both probably going to die horribly in the immediate future. How is that going to help anyone?”
One of the young men grabbed a tool from the workbench and jumped in to help Grant, who was bleeding from multiple places.
“It was the most efficient way to find you.” Fourteen dodged the tire iron swinging toward his head and used the momentum to kick the other young man—Cym’s fourth cousin twice-removed, Clint, he thought his name was—in the shield, and his foot sank in, slowing his momentum. Fourteen recovered in time to twist away from the glittering knife that had appeared in Grant’s hand.
The fight was too close for Cym’s liking. If Fourteen had been fighting norms, he wouldn’t be as worried—he’d seen what he’d done to a dozen trained mercenaries by himself—but with his hands tied and without a gun to eat up his opponents’ shields, this fight would last only as long as Fourteen’s body did.
Cym inspected the damage he’d done to the crate during his frenzy. If Fourteen thought he was going to sit around twiddling his thumbs while Fourteen slowly fought himself to death, he was out of his mind.
“This is the dumbest thing anyone has ever done!” Cym was certain only dogs could hear his voice at this point.
“I imagine you would have suggested running away?” Fourteen asked as he dispatched Grant by throwing his arms around Cym’s uncle’s head and slamming his face into Fourteen’s knee. Cym was irritated Fourteen didn’t even have the decency to sound winded.
“It would have been better than coming here alone against an army!” Cym was trying to keep himself calm, but the way his voice was making his own ears buzz made him think he was failing.
More people poured into the room—some of them members of the Blaike family, some of them mercenaries. Cym did his best to force his already battered feet through the hole he’d made and ignored the bolts of pain that shot up his legs as he did so.
Fourteen’s cold facade cracked, and he gave a savage smile as he asked, “Who said I was alone?”
Chapter 17
Cym
An explosion shook the ground beneath them, and Fourteen’s smile turned cocky, making an impression on Cym’s mind he would keep for the rest of his life.
The word MINE resonated throughout his entire being, and Cym redoubled his effort to get out of the cage.
“Please don’t do that,” Fourteen called over his shoulder as he threw Cym’s uncle into the new people flooding through the door. “It’ll be easier for me to get you out of here if you haven’t collapsed from blood loss.”
Grant stayed on the floor where he’d been thrown, his head lolling at an impossible angle. Fourteen was still fighting the two young men who had dragged him in, and it looked like a badly choreographed movie scene. They tried to magically throw random items from around the room at him, apparently having missed the memo about Fourteen’s shield. As soon as the magically charged item got within a yard of Fourteen, it dropped to the floor, robbed of its momentum.
Fourteen would strike out at their shields and be slowed significantly. Apparently his armor could only do so much. Everywhere his shield collided with one of Cym’s cousin’s shields, the air would distort and time would appear to slow down.
As Cym contemplated how helpful having a nervous breakdown would be, Fourteen reached for the hem at the bottom of his jacket and appeared to tear something out of it. Cym saw a glint of metal in his hand as Fourteen made to strike one of Cym’s cousins.
Instead of slowing down this time, Fourteen’s hand punched through the shield and connected, tearing a line of flesh off the man’s face. Cym’s cousin screamed in terror—he was young enough that it was probably the first time he’d been wounded so badly in a fight. Fourteen allowed him to turn and flee from the room.
Several more explosions followed the first one, and all the Blaikes except Hester ran out of the room, glad for the excuse to leave the five mercenaries behind to stabilize the situation.
“This is getting out of control.” Hester was behind Cym, tying a rope to the crate, presumably to drag him out of the garage while still keeping a safe distance.
Cym did the only thing he could think of, he grabbed Hester’s arms tightly with both hands.
“Why, you little…” His monster-mother’s face began to twitch as Cym held on for dear life.
As the creature twisted and screamed in his hold, he felt his body begin to heat up and the pinkness inside him flowed into Hester, much like it had with Fourteen, only a hundred times stronger. He felt incandescent as the power poured through his body, scouring away everything in its path.
If he had been able to scream he would have, but his jaw had locked tight along with the rest of his body. At this point, he couldn’t have let go of Hester if he wanted to. No matter how much it burned, no matter how much his injured arm and hand complained, he was stuck tight. As the pink inferno grew to intolerable levels of pain, he realized he was about to burn to death. Hopefully, at the very least, he would take his grandmother with him.
Without warning, he felt himself detach from his body, drifting away from it until he hovered over the scene in the garage. He could still feel the magic roaring through him, but it felt distant and unimportant. Idly, he noted that his body hadn’t actually caught on fire.
Wild.
He looked down at the woman trapped by his corporal body and felt the world around him change. The garage had vanished, and in its place was a cemetery on a hill overlooking a smog-covered city. What should have been a breathtaking sunset was almost completely drowned out by the smoke coming from the city below.
A horse whickered behind him quietly, and he turned to see an ornate carriage draped in black bunting coming to a stop several yards away. The driver of the carriage hopped down from his perch and opened the door of the carriage after letting down the steps. A woman, dressed in black from head to toe, held out a hand and allowed the driver to help her down.
“Leave me.” Her voice was cold and imperious as she ordered the driver away.
He hesitated, worried about leaving a lady alone in a cemetery at night.
“Go!”
His lady’s sharp rebuke was enough to convince him. Nodding once, he said, “As you wish, mum.” Tugging his hat, he climbed back up on his perch and drove the carriage away.
Cym couldn’t see the woman’s face under the heavy veil she wore, but something about the way she moved was familiar.
As soon as the carriage was out of sight, the woman strode over to a large stone structure, stalked up the stairs, and with a sharp gesture, sent the heavy doors flying open.
Cym followed her inside, curious.
A second gesture caused the lanterns on the walls inside the mausoleum to burst into flames. For a time, the woman stood in the center of the room silently. Slowly her shoulders began to shake. At first, Cym thought she was crying, until a loud peal of laughter rang out from the woman’s small frame.
“I finally did it.” Her voice was raw with triumph. “I beat you, you bastards.” Her laughter grew wild and unhinged, continuing far longer than any sane person would.
“You know, you weren’t what I was expecting.” A harsh, confident voice spoke from a corner of the room, halting the woman’s bout of mania in its tracks. “Not at all.” In the darkness, a pustulant, oozing wrongness radiated outward, filling the room. Cym recognized it as the same nightmare that had set up shop inside his mother’s body in the present day.
The woman held out both hands, crackling with red fire. “I’m a match for you, nightmare. Go find someone smaller to feed on.”
Laughter rolled out from the dark corner, slow and rumbling. It was a tangible thing that crawled over Cym’s skin, leaving him feeling like he needed a bath.
