21. Chapter 21
Chapter twenty-one
LUCA
Sage grabbed my arm and the world went dark. I turned to him and stumbled a step when I realized we were somewhere else entirely. It was only a short distance from where we’d been standing originally, but with one distinct difference. We were now inside the wards.
“That was a trap,” Sage snapped in an odd tone. His black eyes held mine steadily. The demon inside of Sage knew we were aware of its existence and had no more reason to hide. “Be more careful. Do not underestimate what you are walking into here.”
“Don’t go, I want to talk to you,” I blurted, but Sage’s brows pinched and when he blinked, his eyes were blue again.
He immediately realized something wasn’t right. “Did you…?”
His attention went to the spot we’d nearly triggered a short distance away and his lips pressed into a firm line. I was capable of traveling short distances quickly, but I wasn’t capable of dashing through wards. Sage seemed to realize what happened and decided not to finish his question.
“Let’s get closer to the house,” he said instead, leaving me behind and striding forward, avoiding the graves as he went.
The plan had been to leave him behind, but it was more than obvious he never had any intention of letting that happen. At this point, it was better to stay together where I could keep an eye on him.
Between Sage’s sensitivity to the energy and my sense of smell, we were able to avoid the other traps once we were watching for them. This witch was devious and his use of dark magic allowed him to work outside the limits of a typical witch, but dark magic had a drawback. It was easier to detect than standard magic.
Once we reached the house, Sage relied on me to find an access point. We were about halfway around the house when I picked up another presence. Though anything being said was concealed behind the additional layer of wards on the building itself.
Sage pulled out a handful of items, tiny bones, crystals, and vials of something herbal.
“I thought you couldn’t do magic at all?” I whispered.
“Anyone can do magic if you’re willing to pay for the pre-made stuff. These items are all pre-spelled, but since it’s an intensive spell, it needs to be assembled and a price needs to be paid each time it’s used.”
“What does that mean?”
“Hold your breath.”
He used an ornate dagger to slice his palm and dripped his blood over the components he’d laid out as he whispered words in another language.
“What kind of spell is that?”
Any spell that required blood and bones was not simple magic. It had to border on dark magic and yet, Sage hadn’t hesitated to use it. It wasn’t the first time either. Even before he’d told me to hold my breath I’d already stopped breathing because the scent of his blood had long since soaked into that bone.
“An expensive, but useful one,” he finally answered, cupping his hands to catch the pooling blood and holding them in front of the wall.
An image appeared in the shiny surface and the sounds inside the room came through Sage’s hands.
A man paced impatiently just outside a spell circle. Inside the circle, a woman lay motionless on a stone platform.
“That body has no heartbeat. She’s not breathing. I’m pretty sure she’s dead.”
Sage’s eyes widened as he stared at the young woman. Her face was pale but beautiful, perfectly preserved. She was no older than mid-twenties, assuming she’d aged as most humans and witches did, but we knew that Mars was far older.
Leanna knelt on the floor inside the spell circle, her face bruised and bloody. She panted with effort just to keep herself upright.
“Tell me!” Mars barked. “My men are out collecting your fox shifter as we speak. If you don’t want to talk to her ghost, I suggest you cooperate.”
“Don’t!” Leanna finally said. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, just leave her alone.”
“Speak!”
“She’s there. She's been trapped in that body since you locked her away twenty years ago. Frozen in time, unable to move on, unable to live, unable to truly die. She’s fully aware of what’s happened, the time that passes, the lives sacrificed for the magic that you tied to her. No, that you forced on her. If you continue to leave her like that, she will lose herself completely and turn into a vengeful spirit. What did you think would happen when you did this to her?”
Mars snarled. “It’s a temporary measure! Soon she will live just as she did before and she will stand at my side as we always intended.”
“As you intended,” Leanna coughed. “She was a young woman with no say in her own life, trapped in an unhappy marriage and surrounded by an unsupportive family. She was miserable and you were an escape route. The dream you had to rule over the covens of Eastbend was never hers. All you’ve done is trap her again.”
“Liar! Her coven valued power over all else and I was the strongest of them all! Every one of them bore witness to our strength!”
“And your show of power cost her life. Let her go. It’s what she wants.”
“You will not manipulate me into letting you live. All I need is a little more power, a little more time, and she will stand at my side again. You won’t get to see any of it, but it won’t be long now.”
“This is all about power? What good is power when you use it like this?”
“Everything is about power! My only mistake back then was thinking that ruling over the covens would be enough. I will bring this entire town to its knees. Eastbend will pay for hurting her.”
Leanna gasped for breath. It was becoming clear that the circle was draining her life to feed the spell preserving the dead woman.
“You're the one hurting her. If you want to avenge her look no further than the mirror.”
Mars swung his arm and a force slammed into Leanna, throwing her to the other end of the spell circle. Her head smacked the ground and she didn't move again, but her heartbeat reassured me that it wasn't too late.
Sage sucked in a breath. “That shouldn’t be possible!”
“What?”
“Casting on the fly like that without the use of spells and rituals, it’s not something witches can do. Not even ones who use dark magic. Experienced mages and sorcerers can do it using themselves as the source, their own magic energy, but witches don’t have that. It’s not possible, unless…”
“Unless he’s not a witch.”
“Or not just a witch. Mom said there were rumors about his bloodlines, looks like those were true. Even so, have you ever heard of someone being able to access both sides of a mixed bloodline? Usually only one side is dominant. I’ve never heard of a shifter being able to access two animal forms, or anyone who is both magic user and anything else. So how can he access two types of magic?”
“Maybe he’s been a mage all along,” I suggested.
“That’s a possibility. Or he used dark magic to awaken a dormant bloodline. I guess technically mages could practice witchcraft if it was in their blood, they just have no reason to go through all the extra work of requesting power from their ancestors and the earth when they have power of their own. Their spells are faster, simpler and more powerful because they only have to direct the magic they pour into it.”
“So why would Mars hide that power?” I asked.
Sage shook his head. “He was raised as a witch in a coven, the importance of ancestry is a huge factor in everything we do. Even if he knew what he was, he may have been afraid to reveal the truth for fear of being cast out. And as he got older, the drive to prove to the covens that he was the most powerful witch would have been enough to hide the fact that he was actually a mage. The covens would never fall in line behind someone who wasn’t even one of them. But Marsden’s mother was known in Eastbend, they accepted him as a witch without question, even if they didn’t consider him a strong one. When he returned so much stronger than he’d left, that’s when the rumors started about the unknowns of his father’s bloodline. It would have been another reason to resist his ambitions.”
“So what’s the best way to deal with him? I need to get Leanna out of that spell circle before it’s too late.”
“If you step inside that circle, it’ll drain your life just like it’s doing to her.”
“I can’t just leave her in there,” I argued as I sent off a message to Silas. Though, I wasn’t sure he would make it before that spell drained Leanna dry. “Can we break the spell circle?”
“With enough power, pretty much any spell can be broken, but magically speaking, neither of us are stronger than he is and I don’t have any sorcery level spells on me, do you? Mage spells aren’t going to work, we would need a ton of them to overload a spell that strong.”
“I’ve got two that Elliot made. We’ll need one to break the ward on the house. I was going to use the other to break the perimeter ward and since we’re locked inside, I’ll need to save it to get out.”
“We can’t underestimate him, either. He’s a lot stronger than he looks,” Sage pointed out. “He’s been running that spell, preserving Cassandra for twenty years. If we break it, I can’t even imagine what he’ll do.
“It has to be consuming a lot of his power too. Life and death isn’t a balance you can easily mess with, and to keep a spell like that going for so long must be weakening him, even with the sacrifices. It explains why he didn’t take over once my grandmother’s coven was out of the way. He didn’t have the magic to both save Cassandra and take over Eastbend. He’s been building up his magic over all these years. If we take away the one thing holding him back…”
Sage didn’t finish that thought, but he didn’t need to.
“Then I’ll deal with Mars first. If I can somehow switch places with Leanna and get her out of the circle, it’ll buy us time until Silas gets here. We can figure it out from there.”
“That’s a terrible plan, no way. You're just going to get both of you trapped.”
“It’s our only option. We don’t have magic, but I’m fast and strong. I can be on him before he knows what’s happening. Will the spell die out if I kill him?”
“Once the residual magic runs out. It’s also possible that killing him will trigger all of the trap spells he’s set up. He’s full of anger and resentment. He may end up taking all of us out with him, including Leanna and Cassandra.”
I sighed. “So we leave him alive for now. It’s fine, I can work with that.”
I stood and prepared to find a way into the building. Sage dropped the pool of blood in his hands and used one slick hand to grab my wrist, tugging me back.
By the time I turned to face him, we were inside the building. Without magic in the way, I could now hear Mars moving around in the next room. I didn’t need to see Sage’s eyes in the dark to confirm that the demon had once again taken over, but he shot me an angry look that didn’t look right on Sage’s face and I responded with one of my own.
“Get him out of here,” I hissed.
“If you didn’t want me involved, you should have come up with a plan you were actually capable of executing. Sage was never going to let you walk in here on your own. The only chance of success at this point is with my help.”
“How much do you know? Sage said we can’t kill him, and so far, that’s all we’ve seen you do.”
The demon shot me an icy look. “At least I was there. Where were you?”
I snapped my mouth shut. He was right. Blaming someone else didn’t excuse the fact that I hadn’t been there when Sage needed me. Especially when he’d been there for me so many times.
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
The demon’s eyes widened, but he recovered quickly. “The utilities in this place are powered by spells. It’s a fairly standard magic that can be easily purchased. I’ll need you to find the one powering the lights and deactivate it. Destroy it if you need to. Turning them off won’t work if he can turn them right back on, we need them cut off at the source.”
“You’re planning on going in there?”
“There’s no other choice. I’m the only one who can pull her out of the circle without stepping inside, but I’ll need the dark.”
I’ll need the dark. It probably shouldn’t have taken him saying that to realize that was why he couldn’t always protect Sage. Shadow demons needed shadows to move around, of course the demon’s ability to help would be limited when cornered by lights.
“Can you stay in the shadows and pull her out without alerting Mars to our presence?”
“Not in these circumstances.”
“What does that mean? You could do it under different circumstances?”
“If I wasn’t trapped in a body I could remain in the shadows. Sage’s body doesn’t allow for that, I can only travel short distances. Even shorter when I’m pulling someone else through. I’ll be able to pull her to the edge of the circle, but not much beyond that. He will see us.”
“Then I’ll have to be a little flashy about cutting the lights. That should draw him out of the room so you can grab her and get out. I’ll meet you in the same spot we came through.”
Sage hesitated. “Are you sure you can get out on your own?”
To be honest, I was a little shocked by the question. “Are you… worried about me?”
He clicked his tongue in annoyance as his eyes darted away. “Sage has grown attached.”
“I see. Wait for my signal. If anything goes wrong, just get Sage out of here. Silas will be here soon.”
“Understood.”
He still wouldn’t look at me, but I trusted that protecting Sage was his first priority based on how he’d behaved so far. I turned to leave, but stopped to look over my shoulder at the demon disguised as Sage. This wasn’t the time to ask all the things I wanted to ask, but there was one thing it felt like I should know.
“What should I call you?”
Asking a demon’s name was touchy territory since that was part of the information used to summon them, but most had another name they went by in our world. This demon had been with Rosemary for a long time, he must have a name. And yet, he stared at me blankly for so long I started to think he didn’t understand the question.
“What did Rosemary call you?”
He looked pained when he finally answered. “Keir.”
“If you don’t like that name, I can call you something else.”
He shook his head. “It’s been many years since I’ve heard my name, I was not expecting the question.”
“Okay then, Keir, wait for my signal. I’ll meet you outside.”
He turned his back and I took it as a dismissal.
“Be aware of trap spells,” he murmured as I left the room. “I won’t be there to save you this time.”
The fucking house was every bit as huge as it looked from the outside. It was three levels above ground and a basement below. The top level was nothing but a spell room, libraries of old books and creepy as fuck magic items. Traps were set up all over the place, but I wasn’t there to steal anything, so they were easy to avoid. The problem was, it was difficult to pinpoint if the light magic was hidden somewhere among the magic items with the smells all over the place so the search took longer than it should have.
The second floor was bedrooms and assuming that was the least likely place to store the utility spells, I gave it a quick glance before rushing through the main level and again coming up with nothing. The basement turned out to be more of a dungeon than anything else. Chains hung from the walls and ceilings and huge spell circles took up most of the floor. Traps littered the area, but with one glance, I could tell the spell I was looking for wasn’t down there. Who would keep something like that so close to where they held prisoners?
Back on the main floor I dug around some more and found a garage connected to the house behind a hidden door panel. Inside the garage was a 1969 Chevy Camaro and I paused long enough to admire the pretty car before finally finding the spell I’d been looking for. A castle and a nice car, being a power hungry evil magic user must pay well.
Along the wall, several crystals hung against the house, connected as if magnetic. Those were definitely what I was looking for, but I had no idea which affected the lights. It was probably a bit much to have expected the evil witch to label his spells like a breaker box.
I palmed one of Elliot’s spells and selected one crystal from each pairing. The second I ripped the crystals away the castle went dark and I ran full speed to the dining room on the other side of the first floor, tossing the potion at the ward on the house. Sparks flew back at me as the ward cracked and snapped in an odd way.
Ollie broke wards the same way several times and there was always some kind of reaction, but this one seemed different. More violent. The backfire shattered the huge floor to ceiling windows, shooting glass like bullets.
I ducked behind the half-wall as the pungent scent of rot drifted in from the yard. Of course, breaking the ward triggered the traps. Fuck.