Chapter 24
July 15, 1851, Blaugdone Island, Rhode Island
Merritt’s body numbed. It started at the tips of his fingers and toes, then crawled up his limbs inch by inch. It had nearly reached his heart when he stuttered, “Wh-What?”
New tears trailed from Hulda’s eyes before she covered her face with her hands, too emotional to explain. But she didn’t need to. Merritt and Owein both were familiar with the workings of soothsaying. Hulda did not see the future as it might be, but as it was. If Hulda saw Owein dead, then ...
Merritt grasped her by her shoulders. “Are you sure , Hulda?” Perhaps she saw something out of context. That happened, sometimes. Her weak augury wasn’t as tightly controlled as any of them would like. “Tell me exactly what you saw!”
His words had a blade’s edge, but now was not the time to tame them. His eyes burned. His heart splintered like pellets from a shotgun. He had to know. He had to know.
In the epitome of bad timing, Hulda pushed the words out just as Fallon approached. “I saw him there.” She pointed weakly to the reeds and grasses north of Whimbrel House. “Wearing just what he has on now. I saw him pale and wide-eyed and still, with Fallon kneeling beside him, screaming. Blood ...”
Her breaths came too fast. Merritt pulled her into him, embracing her, trying to comfort her as much as himself, hardly able to think for how hard his pulse hammered in his skull. Feeling apart from his body, he looked at Owein, who was more a son to him than anything else. The younger man’s lips pressed into a thin line. His shoulders jutted sharply, his jaw set, his expression resolute but his eyes ablaze.
“No,” Fallon whispered, shaking her head, first at Hulda and Merritt, then at Owein. She seized his arm. “No, it won’t happen. I won’t let it happen.”
But Fallon didn’t understand how the magic worked. It would happen, one way or another. And likely soon.
Merritt couldn’t crumple, not now. Not with the fog sweeping their island. Silas Hogwood came with the fog. Hulda had seen that, too.
His eyes and the inside of his nose burned. His throat thickened to the point of obstructing his breathing. No, no, no, his thoughts pleaded. Please, God, not him .
Jonelle, still shaken, said, “N-No sign of Mirren.”
Lisbeth, the technician from Ohio, nervously approached.
Through clenched teeth, Merritt forced, “She’s likely dead,” and peered at the fog, which billowed toward them far faster than any natural fog could move. It graced the tips of the island now, still growing. How much longer could they possibly have?
If Owein couldn’t stand up to Silas, which of them ever could?
“Hogwood.” Pankhurst spat the name like a curse and threw his pipe into the weeds, stomping on it hard enough to snap the wood. “Get inside, everyone. We need to prepare.”
“You don’t have the numbers.” Owein’s eyes were trained on the fog, their gray color hardened to steel. “Silas led your people on a wild-goose chase before circling back here. You need our help.”
Chill bumps ripened on Merritt’s skin. Squeezing his sobbing wife, he shut his eyes and reached out, deep and wide, the way the Druids in England had taught him. He sought to read not one great tree but the presence of a million blades of grass and leaves of clover. His consciousness swept over them, too quickly to really hear what they said. Wisps of water and night? and eat graced his awareness. He focused on those, stretching his spell farther, ignoring the ringing in his ears and the orders barked by the English lord. Water. Water? Night. Food. Still. Water. Bug. Water. Eat. Dark. Heavy—
His eyes snapped open, instantly severing his connection with the squashed blade of grass. Dark. Heavy .
Footfalls.
“He’s there,” Merritt croaked, releasing Hulda and pointing past the Babineaux house. South, and slightly west, of where they stood. “He’s coming fast.”
“Lord, help us.” Pankhurst’s hand trembled as he reached into his vest for a match. “Run.”
Lisbeth bolted right back into the Babineaux house, but Hulda ran for Whimbrel. Owein knew why immediately—Merritt owned firearms. The Babineauxs didn’t.
“Quickly!” Pankhurst hissed, ushering them in the same direction. It would be better to draw attention away from Lisbeth and Blightree. Owein pressed a hand to Fallon’s back, urging her after Hulda and Merritt.
He was halfway to Whimbrel House when a punch of air struck his back, sending him flying.
Owein landed hard on reeds and loam, skidding several feet on his shoulder. “Go!” he shouted to the Fernsbys, picking himself back up with empty hands. Empty hands. He cursed. Lisbeth’s vial, the serum—where had it gone?
A figure clothed darkly from neck to toe approached from the west. Reaching into his pocket, Owein pulled out the grease pencil. Before he could use it, however, Fallon snatched his arm, trying to haul him to his feet.
He grabbed her elbow instead. “Go with Hulda. Protect her.”
“I can fight!” she protested.
“Hulda can’t ,” he pleaded.
Fallon’s green eyes shifted back and forth between each of his own. Then, mercifully, she ran for Whimbrel House.
Silas called out something as he neared, but Owein didn’t understand it. Instead, with the pencil, he wrote on the inside of his forearm:
Kill Silas
The Man in Black
With Black-and-White Hair
He is Bad
Fight Him
He felt the whoosh of moving air to his left. Another kinetic spell. Not aimed at him, but at Hulda and Fallon. Owein surged to his feet, but not before Aster, the brave, stupid dog, bolted at the newcomer. Before she could get her teeth on him, Silas shoved her aside with another spell, earning a yip in response.
Owein thrust out discordant movement from his person, ripping up the island between himself and the stiff-legged Silas as chaos spun and tore. The man leapt to the side, landed on his feet, and sprinted toward him—
Wait, what?
Owein looked down at his arm. Kill Silas.
The confusion ebbed, and Owein bolted to meet him.
Silas’s murderous charge ended abruptly as he ran into an invisible wall. Blood sprayed from his nose. A sound like glass breaking echoed. The wardship spell dissolved, and Silas whipped toward Merritt, throwing him back into the chicken coop before Merritt could raise a second wall.
Owein sprinted through the distraction and leapt onto Silas, knocking them both to the ground. Silas’s sleeve rose with the tumble, revealing his blackened arm. The stench of it was nearly overwhelming. Owein seized it with both hands, pushing out through Oliver. Rot poured from his hands as the necrosis spell took hold. Silas shrieked and beat Owein with his other hand. Wincing, Owein held on, held on—
Kinesis kicked him in the chest and sent him flying. He tumbled across glass—no, another wardship spell—before teetering off its edge. He fell, but the spell had slowed him just enough for him to land on his feet.
His stomach turned. Not just from the tumble and the use of necromancy, but from Silas’s necrotic hand clenched in his. The rot had melted straight through the bone of his forearm.
Owein dropped the appendage, bile rising—
Kinesis bruised his ribs and sent him flying again. Not as far this time; he landed on the path to the dock on his backside. He looked up just in time to see Pankhurst strike a match.
With a cupping motion of his hand, the British wizard—apparently an elementist —expanded the tiny flame into a large ball of fire, a spell similar to what Silas had used in that dark basement in Marshfield so many years ago, before the death of his dolls. The fireball shot from Pankhurst to the deranged Silas, who looked up from his missing limb only just quick enough to duck beneath his cloak. The fire coursed over him, catching the very edges of the fabric. But from luck, or had the man condensed the fabric to make it less flammable?
Pankhurst’s cold breath puffed in the air. Owein struck out with random subterfuge before Silas could recover, but the fickleness of the spell merely made the grass rise, root and all, and spin in place. Silas evaded it easily, moving closer to the other wizard even as his healing spell soothed the scorch marks on his forehead.
Owein focused on his own arm as the inevitable confusion tickled his mind, the black grease letters stark against his skin. He is Bad. Fight Him.
If Owein could get close enough, hold on to Silas’s neck or head long enough, the necrosis could end this once and for all.
A second fireball zoomed past. Silas dodged it entirely—luck—and flung out his hand with a kinetic spell, a narrow, targeted one that struck Pankhurst’s matches and shattered them.
Owein ran back into the fray, igniting a spell of discordant movement. It seized Silas’s cloak and jerked him backward, then upward, just as gunshots rang through the air.
Jonelle. She’d taken up position on the porch and clutched a revolver. The muzzle sparked as she shot again, missing, missing, missing—but even Silas’s luck couldn’t hold out forever. The fifth shot struck him in the bicep.
Silas roared and made a ball of his remaining fist; the revolver condensed into a sphere of metal. Merritt used the opportunity to throw up another wardship spell. Owein tackled Silas from behind, shoving him into the unseen wall, hearing a satisfying crunch from the madman’s nose as he did so. Ignited necrosis, but the spell didn’t take through Silas’s clothes. Stomach sour, Owein animated Silas’s cloak, which began twisting and choking him, and reached for the sliver of neck above the cloak. Silas threw back a sharp elbow into his ribs before shattering the wardship wall. Owein stumbled. Silas fumbled a gun of his own and fired twice. Either Silas was left-handed or he’d flared his luck spell, for Jonelle screamed as blood spurted out from her leg. Merritt, in front of the house, fell near silently, crimson blooming at his hip.
Owein’s gut lurched. No. No, no, no—
Hulda screamed. Owein was close enough to hear Silas spit, “—kill you once and for all.”
Lunging, he grabbed the madman around the knees, knocking him down. Pushed an alteration spell into his clothes, but not enough before Silas shoved kinesis into him once more, breaking his grip and sending him rolling toward the docks, bruising hips, shoulders, elbows, and knees. The earth spun and thumped, spun and thumped. Owein’s clawed fingers in the weeds helped slow him not far from his family’s graves, until he could plant his palms against the soil and shake himself, willing the dizziness to abate.
“You. Are. Making. This. Difficult, ” Silas hissed, marching toward him, cradling his rotted stump against his stomach.
Owein looked up and spied his shovel within arm’s reach—the same one he’d used to dig up his grave. He grabbed it, rolled, and swung, infusing the tool with alteration as he did so, tripling the size of the spade by the time it came around and smashed into the side of Silas’s head. Shots from Pankhurst wheeled overhead.
Owein bit down on a scream, thinking at first that Pankhurst had shot him, then realizing the alteration magic had bent his left elbow backward. He dropped the shovel and grabbed his left arm with his right hand, as though he could correct the joint, but he couldn’t. Now, of all times for the cost to be this debilitating!
Silas’s broken nose dribbled, torn cheek swelled. Blood matted his hair, and his jaw had a sizable dent in it that popped back into place as the madman’s necromantic healing took hold. With one hand, Owein swung again, but Silas used a breaking spell, exploding the shovel handle into splinters. Silas spat out teeth. Teetered back, looking confused.
Pankhurst wasn’t. He opened fire on the man. Owein heard at least one bullet hit. But would it hit hard and deep enough to make a difference before Silas’s innate healing saved him?
Utilizing the distraction, Owein crawled over to Merritt, trying not to put weight on his left arm. Merritt was alert, hissing through clenched teeth and wincing, both his hands pressed to the bullet hole in his hip. He lay supine, framed by tall summer grass.
Owein didn’t have time to treat the injury, or even stanch it. Sounded like Pankhurst was out of bullets. So he pressed his hands to Merritt’s clothes and turned them the same shade of green as the grass, camouflaging him the best that he could. Viciously, his fingers twisted in retribution. Owein bit the inside of his cheek, tasting blood. Stood and moved away from Merritt. He didn’t see Pankhurst. Silas moved toward him, bleeding and spitting and enraged—
A swarm of flies flew at Silas from nowhere, zooming from all directions, buzzing darkly around his face. Owein gaped. Merritt’s doing?
Regardless, Silas stumbled back, right onto the Mansel family graves.
Owein didn’t think twice. He reached deep and thrust out discordant movement once more. The magic seized the tombstones and made them dance, tilt, and shift, tripping up the wizard’s feet. Silas fell to his knees. The impact loosened a dead, black chunk from his forearm.
Owein’s elbow popped into place just in time for him to use another alteration spell, seizing Silas’s collar as he had before, shrinking it, choking him—
And, just as before, Silas used a breaking spell, shredding the garment to pieces.
Owein panted as the magic made his ribs change, confusion threatening him once more. He looked at his arm. Kill Silas. It had smeared, was barely legible. Owein shook his head, trying to orient his thoughts. The first he grasped was If I’m not thinking clearly, neither is he. The second was Merritt and Jonelle are bleeding out.
He couldn’t even get to Jonelle. Not with Silas between them.
A new shot pierced the air, waking up Owein’s brain. Hulda had Merritt’s revolver and shot from the house—the bedroom window. Once, twice, missing both times.
Owein seized Silas’s cloak once more and shrunk it as he had the collar, wishing he had kinesis to drag Silas closer and end this. Silas choked only a moment before tearing through it with a breaking spell as Owein’s right ear mutated. If only Owein had more alteration spells! He needed his mind, not his body! He could stomach the pain—
Another bullet, this one from the direction of the trees, skimmed Silas’s shoulder. Pankhurst had a second gun!
Silas hurled a kinetic spell at Owein, shoving him away from Merritt. Twisting, Silas directed another kinetic spell to seize Pankhurst’s rifle and rip it from his hands. The firearm flew through the space between them. Silas caught it midair in his one remaining hand.
Owein’s pulse raced, making him light-headed. How much did confusion affect a man already mad?
Silas turned toward him and fired.
Had Owein not lived so long, not practiced with chaos so endlessly, he wouldn’t have reacted in time. And it was just in time. The random subterfuge rippled out from him, catching the bullet in its wake, shredding it almost like a breaking spell would. The shrapnel still hit him, cutting long, stinging lines into his face and neck. The spell eddied, catching Silas, making his boot twist around and a tree root jut outward, arrow straight, and catch his foot.
What was Owein doing again?
Where was he?
He stood, stumbled. Read ... What was he supposed to read? His head didn’t feel his own. He retreated three steps, four, trying to recall—
A soft clink against the heel of his shoe. Owein glanced down and saw a little tube with a strange, almost sparkly mixture in it. Crouching, he picked it up. There was a needle—
His mind sharpened. Serum.
No time to lose. Owein ripped the cap off the syringe and jabbed it into his arm, depressing the plunger so quickly it burned.
Kinesis hit him hard enough to snap his head back.
The world went black. Then gray. Owein blinked, light filtering into his reed-filled vision, the leaves slowly sharpening. His ears rang, playing a constant, high-pitched note. Wincing, he pushed himself up. Saw Silas’s shadow just before the man swung the butt of Pankhurst’s rifle into his head.
White flashed. Shadow swallowed him. Pain surged through his skull, down his neck, into his shoulders. He blinked back red, wet light. Wiped his eyes, but the blood kept pouring—
The screech of a hawk brought him to his senses. The bird whipped by. Owein tried to focus on it, but he was so dizzy, so ... tired. His head pounded thump , thump , thump . He pushed himself up. Collapsed. He needed to get distance between himself and Silas. He needed to save Fallon—
The hawk turned in the sky, folded its wings, and dove for Silas. Silas readied the gun to swing—
Lifting a foot, Owein kicked the back of Silas’s knee, sending him off balance. Right before collision, Fallon shifted into a dog. She slammed into Silas, knocking them both into the front of Whimbrel House, her teeth sinking into the base of Silas’s neck.
Black spots again. Owein’s breathing rasped too loudly. His heart, too deep. Stay awake. Stay awake, he pleaded, blinking blood from his eyes.
Something thudded near him. He looked up. Saw dirt, floating midair ... no, it had stuck to a wardship spell. Merritt had protected him from something. But Merritt can’t! his mind screamed. Every spell weakens his body!
Merritt was going to die. Hulda was going to die. Fallon was going to die.
He was going to lose them all.
Consuming pain radiated from his forehead. Get up. He pushed one knee under him. Wiped his sleeve across his eyes, smearing blood. A glimmer in the grass ahead of him caught his eye—Blightree’s communion stone. He reached for it, for whatever good it would do, but it lay just too far off for him to grab. Instead, he left bloody fingerprints over its rune.
Focus, he willed himself, withdrawing his hand. Pankhurst was fighting. No gunfire or magic, only himself. Fallon, with a limp in her back leg, leapt at Silas again. Even Jonelle was pulling herself up with the porch railing, trying to help. Trying to do something .
Owein’s arm burned. From the injection or from injury? Did it matter? The consequences of magic were too great for him. He couldn’t stay on top of the fight. He couldn’t—
He blinked, peering past the wardship spell, across island wilds he’d torn up, to Beth’s house.
Halfway out, I suspect, Mirren had said. He saw her even now, in his mind’s eye, leaning over Blightree.
It’s much easier with a soul I’ve moved before, Blightree had claimed. My magic is familiar with you.
So was Silas’s.
I saw you ... dead, Hulda had said.
The wardship wall flickered out.
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, the poem in Cora’s letter had read, hath had elsewhere its setting.
That was it, then. If he couldn’t reach him with necrosis, he’d reach him with that . It made sense, how he would save them. It meant saying goodbye. He wouldn’t come back from this one. Not this time. But for them?
For them he’d happily dance back into the dark.
He pressed both hands into the matted grass. Pushed himself up. He couldn’t fight safe, not anymore. Had to close the distance and keep it closed. Force Silas’s hand. He stumbled forward as Jonelle threw the ruined revolver. As Hulda screamed. As Fallon danced, trying to find an in. As Pankhurst tried to right himself again.
Do not lose focus, Owein demanded. Silas. Silas. Silas.
Maybe Cora’s own spell of luck had drifted across the ocean with that letter, because Silas’s attention was so focused on murdering Pankhurst that Owein got right beside him before the madman noticed.
Owein lunged, grabbing Silas around his neck—a ring of blackening skin bloomed beneath his fingers. Silas punched him with kinesis; Owein lost his grip but dug his hands into the madman’s protected shoulders. Held on hard enough to crack his fingernails. No more distance. No more safe space.
Silas flung kinesis into Owein, who squeezed tighter, holding on so he wouldn’t be thrown. The blast was like a hammer to his gut, as was the third, which cracked his ribs. Silas shifted stiffly, his body overcome with the magic. The fourth blow wasn’t as bad, but bile stirred and burned. Silas beat at him with one hand and one blackened stump, but Owein wore the wizard like a coat. Pushed into him, freed one hand and tried, one more time, to use Oliver’s spell to save himself. He grabbed Silas’s chin; the man bit down on his finger as his lips rotted. Kneed Owein in the groin and freed himself from the putrid touch, but not from Owein’s grip on his shoulder.
Silas roared, the stench of decay on his breath. He tried condensing Owein’s shirt, hindering him. Owein barreled forward and gripped Silas around the waist, squeezing as hard as he could.
“End it!” he screamed. “ Kill me! ”
Silas did. He grabbed a fistful of Owein’s hair and filled him with necromancy.
It was a familiar sensation, the surging of life-force, the shifting of spirit and flesh, of endlessly sinking. Owein didn’t fight it. He embraced it, releasing the tendrils of Oliver all at once, until suddenly he wasn’t Oliver anymore.
He saw it all without seeing, sensed it without sensing. Oliver crumpling to the ground, Merritt’s uncamouflaged head and hands, Hulda racing from the house, wielding the Mississippi rifle like a club. Pankhurst moaning on the ground and Jonelle shouting at him. Fallon leaping and attacking.
Silas kicked Fallon. Threw Oliver aside. Fallon yelped and shifted back into human, grabbing Oliver’s shoulders, shaking him and screaming.
Silas limped toward Merritt.
No.
Clenching metaphorical fists, Owein ignited all his magic, just as he’d done before, a feverish twelve-year-old boy upon a sickbed, fearing death even as it claimed him. And all those tendrils that had once been Oliver threaded into Whimbrel House once more, sucking him downward from heaven and knitting him into floorboards and painted walls, rugs and beams and cupboards. Fusing him back into a prison that felt like an old friend.
That’s when he first felt the serum Lisbeth had concocted. It was all his magic, so he hadn’t noticed, not at first. But the way his soul expanded, the way he touched the door to the sunroom at the same time he floated through the books in the library, he knew he was more than he’d been. Like this, he was enough.
He seized them all. The reception hall, the bedrooms, the dining room and kitchen, the library, the lavatory, the sitting room. He infiltrated every grain of wood, every stitch of furniture, every inch of glass. No confusion, no warping, no nausea. Like this, he was limitless .
And then, with legs and hands he could now only imagine, he pushed .
The enclosed back porch collided with the kitchen, breakfast room, and dining room. The reception hall smashed into the living room and sunroom, condensing and reshaping as he poured out randomized chaos until it fit his desires, merging it effortlessly with alteration, reshaping the first floor into two legs. He stood even as he remolded the sitting room, library, and office into a jointed arm, smashing walls and floors together to form three fingers, because three should be enough. Broken segments from the lavatory and bathroom flung outward in a lasso, surrounding the yard, reaching and prodding and raking like the tongue of a snake until a sliver grazed his target, and Owein knew exactly where Silas Hogwood was.
He pulled in the lasso, dragging Silas closer until he could seize him with all three fingers, each the thickness of a tree trunk and the length of a desk. Sensed his screams more than heard them as he picked him up off the ground. Felt the tickles of magic as the madman tried to fight back.
No.
And Whimbrel House crushed him.
Owein felt the presence of another as the body slopped to the ground. The soul of a powerful wizard reaching out with his magic, looking for a place to stay.
Owein fortified himself, rejecting him, slamming every iota of his existence and magnified spells into the ruined walls of his home.
And Silas Hogwood passed away.