Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
Oh yeah. The Hunger within her knew something was up.
I began gathering energy. The power of magic comes mainly from an emotional connection to whatever the intention of any given spell happened to be.
I was doing this to help my brother. I thought of him, of Thomas.
I thought of his wry humor. Of his laughter.
Of his courage. He’d stood beside me in extremely hairy situations.
I thought of his desperation when last I’d seen him outside of stasis, of how battered he’d been once the svartalves had gotten done with him.
Felt my desperation and my anger and my fear rising in time with the memories.
Anger and fear.
I had plenty of that to work with.
But that wasn’t all I had. It couldn’t be.
I focused on imagining my brother’s face. On the loyalty I felt for him.
I loved my brother.
I missed him.
And if anyone was going to help him, it was damned well going to be me.
I felt the energy building up around me, felt goose bumps flood across my own skin, the hairs on the back of my neck rising.
I’d forgotten the room’s lights. They all went at once, first burning brighter and brighter and then bursting into small clouds of sparks within the bulbs, leaving the room dark but for the candles, and faint traces of excess energy that sparkled off the field of the circle and danced about the paint and sigils in shades of pale green.
I lifted my right hand, the hand that projects energy, and directed my thoughts upon Lara.
Upon the thing inside her. I pushed my wizard’s senses forward, blending them with the circle, and suddenly I felt it—a slow, twisting roil of nauseating energy, giddying and sickening at the same time.
I felt a sudden desire to let out a mad cackle and suppressed it.
I’d felt this energy before.
Outsider. Hidden right there in front of me.
Outsiders were entities that existed in the raw chaos beyond the Outer Gates, the borders of reality.
They didn’t much believe in coexistence.
Lovecraftian horrors, madness distilled into flesh, things so alien that there simply wasn’t much of a way to understand them, or what they wanted, or why they did the things they did.
I knew they were universally dangerous, universally hostile, and that if they had their way, they’d gleefully tear reality back down into primal chaos, taking every living thing with it.
And I knew that when I talked, they had to listen. When I fought them, they got hurt. When I slung my magic at them, they had to labor to fight against it. I and, presumably, the other starborn.
“Hear me, Hunger,” I murmured. The power I’d gathered changed my voice. It was deeper, harder, twisting oddly through the room. “Hear me.”
Lara drew in a sharp breath and her eyes became brighter, silvery, reflective. “Oh. Oh, empty night,” she breathed. Her skin suddenly glistened with perspiration. “What’s happening?”
“You know who I am,” I said in the same voice. “You know what I am.”
Lara’s eyes rolled back and she began to shudder, abdominal muscles clenching randomly, rapidly.
“I have been given power over your kind,” I said, voice steady and implacable.
Lara’s shoulders twisted, as if trying to escape bindings.
She let out a low, tortured groan. The flames of the candles around the circle leapt up to ten times their original height, and the white paint became brighter, giving off its own green-white illumination as the energy of the circle intensified.
I poured more into it, visualizing what I wanted to do. I spread my fingers, gathering the power, and released it, voice set in a tone of absolute authority and command as I said, “Disparus!”
Power rushed into the circle.
Lara let out a gasping, strangled scream, body arching, arms flinging out wide as she went up onto her toes.
The incense cones flared with heat, and smoke billowed out, filling the circle.
I felt the power take hold. I felt it surround her, her skin going whiter, glittering swaths of green-gold light spiraling around its surface.
“Disparus!” I called, feeling the resistance, feeling the Hunger suddenly struggling wildly against the spell. “Disparus!”
And with a sudden implosion, the smoke of the incense condensed, swirling into the other side of the infinity loop, filling into the sudden form of a being of pale white flesh, almost faceless, hairless, sexless, all lean muscle, a mirror of Lara’s form.
I could feel it struggling against the spell, and I had to keep my will against that force as if pushing up a heavy weight.
But I’d been doing that a lot lately, too.
The Hunger solidified, traces of energy flooding across the infinity loop, misty strands of light that bound it to Lara’s pained form, the two moving as one, shuddering precisely in time with each other, still bound—but separated.
I stared, focused upon the strands between the two of them. I pressed against one of them with my will and felt it begin to give way.
Hell’s bells.
It worked.
It could be done.
Lara and the Hunger opened their mouths and screamed. It came out a double sound, precisely in time, one voice human, agonized, one utterly alien, hair-raising.
I eased the focus of my will against the resistance of the Hunger. Slowly, I closed the fingers of my right hand, letting the magical energy fade as gradually and gently as I could. I could feel the strain of the spell translating to my physical body, felt myself beginning to shake.
As the resistance faded, the pale form of Hunger began to dissipate, to become smoke again, flowing across the strands of energy back to Lara’s body.
I began to redirect the energy of the spell, sending the magic all flowing toward Lara, taking the Hunger with it.
The flames of the candles began to die down again, as smoke swirled around Lara, the Outsider resuming its place within her, vanishing from the other side of the loop.
Lara let out another gasp, eyes flying open suddenly a deep, rich blue.
As I closed my hand, tying off the energy of the spell, letting it come to a close, exhaustion hit me in a wave and I staggered.
I dropped to a knee and slapped my hand across the nearest point of the circle, feeling the magic break and disperse.
Lara dropped to her knees, blue eyes unfocused, covered in sweat. She let out an unmistakable moan of pleasure and exhaustion. She fell forward onto her hands and then crumpled over onto her side, curling into a fetal position, body quivering with random spasms.
I slumped onto my ass, head bowed forward, just trying to slow my breathing. The candles sank down to pinpoints and went out.
We both stayed like that as, outside, fireworks began.
When I looked up, only the fireworks and the lights outside let me see anything at all.
Lara was staring at me in something between horror and awe.
“Did…” She swallowed. “Did it work?”
I nodded my head slowly. “Yeah,” I said quietly. I had to work not to stare at Lara. I wasn’t yet clear on everything that had happened just now—that would take some thought and review. But the basic concept had been proved. I could separate Thomas from his Hunger. “Yeah. We can save him.”
“Empty night,” she breathed. She shook her head, stunned. “Harry. I’m…I’m not Hungry.”