Chapter Thirty-Eight #2
“Stay put a sec,” I said, and went over the circle again, which made the eighth or ninth time I’d done it that day, verifying that everything was clean, clear of any potential debris, and done correctly.
I overlaid my drawn plans, careful one-to-one sketches on translucent paper, on each sigil and made sure every single one was exactly right.
Lara stood over me, and I could feel her gaze on me the whole time. I was close enough to smell her—shampoo and scented soap and some subtle, stirring perfume that I suspected was simply her. Part of my brain got distracted by various memories, and my body was into that.
“Okay,” I said, rising, tucking my drawings away. If I sounded a little out of breath, it was probably just the nerves of preparing the most complex symbolic structure I’d ever done on my own. Not close proximity to a woman who—
—to a vampire, I corrected myself. A succubus. An energy feeder who could leave me a chilly corpse or a drooling vegetable if I forgot what I was dealing with.
I put up the mental defenses almost as a reflex, establishing a barrier around my thoughts and will and pushing away that quivering, almost adolescent excitement that her presence was causing in my body and thoughts alike.
Dammit.
I liked feeling things that weren’t loss and grief and regret and fear.
“Okay,” I repeated, more firmly. “I’m going to bring up the circle and we’ll begin.”
“What do you need of me, specifically?” she asked.
I met her eyes and said, “After the circle is up…I need you to lose control.”
The faint, flirtatious amusement on her face vanished.
“What?” she said after a moment.
I drew in a breath. “Look. It’s got to be as difficult as possible to contain your Hunger, just like it will be with Thomas’s once he’s loose of the crystal. If what you say about his Hunger’s relative strength is true, I’ve got to test this circle out before we do it for real.”
She stared hard at me for a long moment. Her chin twitched up and down. “Logical.” She licked her lips again. “What is going to stop the Hunger from taking me straight out of this circle and over to you once it’s in control?”
“It’s like that?” I asked.
“Like being in someone else’s dream,” she murmured, eyes glittering. “The Hunger will come for you. It will kill you.”
“This is a greater circle,” I said firmly. “Been working on it most days since New Year’s. It should hold just about anything there is. You and your Hunger included.”
“Should?”
“We can’t know without testing it.”
“If it doesn’t work,” she said, “Mab’s going to be rather vexed with me. There will be a great many consequences at play.”
I studied her for a moment. Then I said, “Look, you’ve seen me doing magic in fights, mostly. Lots of blood and thunder stuff. Right?”
“Yes,” Lara said, her eyes unblinking.
“I’m fair at that,” I said. I pointed at the circle.
“This stuff? Slow and careful and tenacious? This is what I am good at. It’s how I made my bread and butter, and you know how hard it is to be a small entrepreneur in this town.
If I wasn’t sure this was going to work, we wouldn’t be here right now. This is what I do.”
Lara lifted her eyebrows, eyes growing more like mirrors. “I adore a confident man.” She closed her eyes, suppressing a smile, and slowly reached up a hand to free her hair from its ponytail, letting it fall down past her shoulders.
Damn. That one just doesn’t get old.
“Very well,” she said. “Tell me when to let go.”
I blinked and said, “Right. Stand by.”
And I began the spell again, as I had on New Year’s Eve, only this time, with the assistance of the deliberately designed material construct, energy flowed remarkably more smoothly and efficiently.
I brought candles to life and closed the circle as the clusters of crystals refracted excess energy as light, varied in color, that illuminated the ghostly, curved double wall of the closed greater circle.
Lara tensed on her feet, hands closing into fists, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. Her mouth opened in a gasp as the circle closed, and then she clenched her teeth together, ghostly white against the darker blush of her lips.
“All right,” I said, keeping my voice firm as I gathered my will for the spell. “We’re ready, Lara.”
She nodded jerkily and then arched up onto her toes, her head falling back.
Okay, I know I had just said that I was ready.
But I wasn’t ready.
I watched her Hunger take her.
Something changed. Shifted. I couldn’t have told you what it was, but every fiber of my being was suddenly sure that I was in mortal danger.
Lara opened her eyes slowly, and they were simply glossy mirrors, silver and bright, reflecting the lab’s candlelight in slowly warping images.
She tilted her head slightly, looking at me, and the inside of the greater circle abruptly flared with light as a sudden tsunami of smoldering, lustful will flashed forth from Lara toward me, only to splash against the interior of the circle, radiating up like scorching heat waves on a summer road.
Hell’s bells. The circle absorbed the supernatural influence, insulating me completely. If it hadn’t, I was pretty sure I’d be food for the Hunger by now.
Lara focused upon me and narrowed her eyes. Her balance shifted, but I lifted a hand and made an effort of will, and her foot did not leave the ground. She remained trapped in the loop of the infinity symbol in the circle’s center.
She took in her circumstances, her expression unreadable.
Then her sensual mouth quirked at one corner and she slowly settled down onto her heels, hips shifting noticeably, hands reaching forward as if ready to spring into a quadrupedal run, mirrored eyes focused expressly upon me.
Lara tilted her head and let out a soft, moaning sound, a weirdly quavering thing, while waves of psychic influence continued to pour off of her, lashing around the interior of the circle in dazzling waves of color.
I could feel the energy of the spell vibrate in time with her voice, quivering as it wavered back and forth, and felt a sudden thrum of disorienting sensation flood over me, as if my body had been a guitar string that had suddenly been plucked.
Ah. Ahhhhhhhhh…buzzed a voice in my mind.
It wasn’t a sound, because it never went past those bones in my ears.
But I could hear it in my head, and it felt like a slithering ball of slippery tongues writhing about the interior of my skull, pressing at my thoughts.
There it is, the frequency. Now it hears.
Lara’s Hunger swept its silver eyes around the circle. The force of its will slammed against the circle on its other side. Then it turned and picked a new spot, pressing against the energy of the spell, testing for imperfections.
We fed upon it at the celebration, the voice in my head said. Lara bared her teeth in a wide, unnerving smile. We want more. Come to us, mortal thing.
The last words struck that chord in my head again, and the Hunger’s will surged against my mental defenses.
I steadied myself as if against a wave, feeling a surge of naked lust slam against me, wash over me in a full-body frisson—and then it was past, and I still stood before the circle, holding the spell steady, secure in my focus and intent.
I mean, seriously. Investing in a greater circle makes all the difference. If I’d had the means, I’d have done this years ago.
The Hunger’s eyes widened. Lara’s mouth twisted into a snarl as she slammed her fist out to the side—where it smashed against the circle of light as if it had been a brick wall. The Hunger struck around at several points of the circle, where she could reach, but I’d done my work properly. It held.
The Hunger bared more of Lara’s teeth than should have been strictly possible and let out a low, harsh hissing sound.
What does it want? said the slithering voice in my head. Let me give it whatever it wants. What remains unfulfilled? Let me into the void in you, mortal. Anything you desire.
It wasn’t just words.
It came with pictures. Sensory input.
Things I didn’t have senses for. Couldn’t understand.
There was a sudden, awful pressure in my head.
“Stop that!” I snapped, and sent a lance of my will forward, against what the Hunger had hurled at me through the connection of the spell.
Lara, crouched low, rocked to one side as if I’d slapped her, and the pressure vanished. She blinked silver mirror eyes wide open and looked shocked. She stared at me for a second and the voice slither-whispered, Starborn.
“That’s right,” I said. “I’ve got stuff to do and no time for Outsider insanity nonsense. Quit it.”
The thing twisted up Lara’s face in fury and began to send more psychic force toward me.
I lifted my right hand and sent out another jab of will into the circle.
The Hunger flinched back slightly, mouth agog.
“I said I’m not having it,” I growled. “Stand down.”
The Hunger grimaced weirdly and then lifted one hand toward me, crouching slightly lower, a gesture of apparent submission that I would be wise not to trust.
Its voice whispered through my head again, sending odd tingles up and down my spine. What does it wish of me?
I took a deep breath and lifted my right hand again, fingers spread.
With a slow exhale and a far gentler effort of will, I sent more magical energy coursing into the circle, and into the Hunger.
For a moment, Lara’s face looked shocked—and then the silver eyes glazed over with white, and her head fell slowly back.
She let out a mewl like a small, starving animal.
And then raw psychic force seized me like a sudden, treacherous undertow as the Hunger drank in the energy I’d poured into the circle and clawed at my thoughts for more.
It was like suddenly experiencing a new axis of gravity, and for a frantic second, I felt myself wobbling, being drawn forward into a silvery daze of sensation.
I realized, with a shock like being hit with a bucket of cold water, that the magical connection of channeling energy into Lara’s Hunger went both ways, as it frantically tried to draw more energy from me.
If I lost focus, lost the spell, the thing could rip my life force out.
And it wouldn’t even be in the sexy way.
I held firm against the pull of the Hunger, the construction of the spell giving me all the leverage, while focusing more and more intention upon sending a steady, controlled stream of energy for the Hunger to feed upon.
It was famished, and I could feel it devouring what I provided ravenously.
Lara’s body fell to its side, convulsing.
And this was the test. When a wizard uses magic, we draw it from all around us, yes—but some of it also comes from inside us.
That’s why we get tired when we keep throwing spells around.
It seemed that I could use a stream of magic to feed the Hunger, maybe because some of it was inevitably the life energy of one of the starborn.
But the question remained: Could I feed a ravenous Hunger enough magical energy to pacify it?
Or would it just keep taking it out of me until there wasn’t enough left to keep my nervous system functioning?
I don’t know how long I stood there, eyes closed, locked in a psychic push-and-pull with the Hunger.
I had to focus so hard upon just keeping myself centered, my intention clear, in the face of the pressure the Hunger exerted on me that there wasn’t much brain left over for things like taking notice of the passage of time.
Eventually, I felt the pressure begin to ease.
I kept the energy going, feeling that my shoulder was tired from holding my right hand out, that my shirt had gotten soaked with sweat despite the subterranean chill.
My legs had locked in place, and my feet ached enough to tell me that I’d been there for a couple of hours, at least. My extended hand felt weak, like it might be about to start shaking.
I opened my eyes slowly.
Lara’s eyes rolled back down, unfocused and bluer than sapphires. She was shivering and shuddering on the floor within the circle. I could feel her Hunger subsiding, like a serpent that had swallowed a large meal and begun to sink into torpor.
Stars and stones.
I’d done everything perfectly on a greater circle. I had all the leverage and held every card—even home field advantage. And Lara’s Hunger had still come close to doing me in.
Lara gasped and twitched for a few seconds and then began to relax. Her eyes fluttered closed in evident exhaustion.
I closed my right hand and lowered it slowly, gently easing off the flow of energy. As it vanished, Lara made a small, disappointed sound. Then she wrapped her arms around herself, curled into a ball, and fell into what appeared to be desperately needed sleep.
I stood there for a moment, taking deep breaths. I was worn out. It had been a considerable amount of work, but I’d been this bad and worse before, plenty of times. I wouldn’t go looking for a battle at the moment or anything, but I’d fought them in worse shape than I was in now, more than once.
If Thomas’s Hunger was a challenge on a scale similar to Lara’s, then maybe I could actually pull this off. Maybe I could bring my brother back from the brink of death.
And if I couldn’t pacify his Hunger, maybe I could still cut it out of him. I’d designed the circle to encompass that function, too.
If I had to do it to save Thomas’s life, I would.
I bowed my head and slumped to the floor to sit and rest.
I felt someone’s gaze on me after a while, and looked up to find Lara staring at me, the oddest expression on her face, her blue eyes troubled.
“Hey,” I said.
Lara blinked several times, smoothing over her expression, and said, “It worked.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You all right?”
“I’m…” She swallowed. “I think I should go.” She got her feet beneath her and rose. She swallowed and looked around at the circle. “Harry,” she said, voice tense.
I blinked at her reaction but murmured a word, waved a hand, and snuffed out the candles, and the circle’s continuity with them. Only the candles on my worktable still lit the lab with a low glow.
Lara stepped carefully out of the circle, murmured, “We’ll talk soon,” without meeting my eyes, and turned to climb up the stepladder, open the trapdoor, and leave the lab. Her footsteps hurried down the hallway above as she…
She fled.
I stared after her for a long while.
What the hell?