30. Chapter 30
Chapter thirty
SAGE
“What the hell is this?” Keir snapped, eyeing the blood stained floor beneath our feet.
His assessment had been right, the wards were down here. I could see the faint glow embedded in the wall across the room. Unfortunately we had no way to reach them while we were trapped in a spell circle that took up the entire floor. Well, not the entire floor. Between us and the wards, a second smaller circle had been drawn right up against the one we were stuck in.
As soon as we’d reached the bottom of the stairs, the spell activated and we were trapped. While dormant, the spell wasn’t immediately noticeable, and it wasn’t until my eyes adjusted to the dark that I was able to see the circle stained into the concrete in blood. It was a strong circle with years, maybe decades of magic, terror, and resentment as stained into the foundation as the blood.
“Can it be destroyed?” Keir asked, examining the unfamiliar markings.
“Not from within,” I answered. “Spell circles can be destroyed by opposing magic, or from the outside, but any magic within the circle would be contained. For any well-built circle anyway, and since this one held up for so long, there’s no way they didn’t protect against the magic users they locked inside it.”
“What if we bleed on it? Won’t that erase the symbols?”
“If it was a new circle, that might work, but his one was established far too long ago. It would take a long time and a lot of blood to soak in deep enough to erase what’s here.”
“Why would a dormant spell circle trap us in the first place?” he snarled. “It has to be maintained and active to do anything.”
Keir spent enough time with witches to know that magic wasn’t infinite. It needed a source, it needed to be powered. Whatever blood and emotion still lingered in this place wasn’t enough on its own.
I sighed. “I suppose the only answer is that it’s being maintained and someone activated it.”
“This was the intent from the moment you got that message,” Keir snapped. “That’s why Mars didn’t stop us upstairs.”
He was right. Mars learned that Keir could slip through his newly build wards when we broke into his house, so he picked a place where he could build them too strong for even a shadow to pass through. And when we were running around his maze like rats, he knew the first thing we would do was try to disable the one thing keeping us here and walk right into his trap.
“This is my fault.” I’d been too eager for the information the supposed informant had and now Mars had Keir exactly where he wanted him.
“I’m the one who insisted we come down here, whatever happens now is my fault.”
“How touching,” Mars said, stepping into view. His ability to completely conceal his presence never got any less disconcerting no matter how many times I witnessed it. “Since we all know why we’re here, there’s no sense in delaying any further. You already know what I want. Release the demon and I will let you leave.”
I glared at the man who’d changed the course of my life before I even had the chance to realize what was happening. “Even if I wanted to, it’s not possible. He isn’t bound to me the way he was my grandmother, tearing him away forcefully would kill him.”
The amusement fell from Mars’s face as he approached and used a small knife to cut his hand before pressing it to the edge of the circle. The magic glowed brighter where his blood fed the spell and I backed away, not wanting it to touch me. Murky lines of red inched closer until we had nowhere left to escape.
The new magic crawled up my body feeling like I was being swallowed up by a plague of centipedes. My nails raked down my arms in a fruitless effort to get it off me. I scratched until blood trickled down my arms, but the magic was completely undeterred. Keir clenched my hands into fists, preventing me from hurting myself further, and I shuddered as the creeping magic crawled under my skin and invaded my body.
It felt like it took forever for Mars to explore every inch of me. It itched like little feelers were crawling inside my veins, touching every part of me, searching through my magic, burrowing into my bones. This was nothing like when Elliot examined me, I hadn’t felt so completely violated when he’d tried to help.
I dropped to my knees and curled over on myself as Keir and I fought for control over my hands. I gagged as they crawled up my throat and in my nose. My eyes watered and I squeezed them shut, but the itchy movement continued under my eyelids. I desperately needed to get it off! But Keir refused to let me go.
My brain knew that clawing at my skin until I found the magic wasn’t going to do anything but hurt myself, but I needed to try. Logic was pushed to the back of my mind when there were swarms of bugs crawling in my veins. I was sure I was going to go insane before he finished his spell.
And then fire ripped across my body as the searching magic found something that didn’t want to be touched. It wasn’t mine. Not my magic, despite the fact that it lived inside me. The crawling feelers poked and prodded at the spell sending agony through my bones with every jab. Even Keir pulled away, I felt him receding within me as the magic invaded every cell.
After what felt like forever, the magic pulled back leaving behind a black residue of wrongness in its wake. I shuddered, unable to shake the need to scrape off my own skin and empty my veins of the slimy feeling. It was revolting. Mars’s magic was wrong, unnatural, I never wanted it near me again.
Mars’s laugh pull my attention away from the sick feeling turning in my stomach.
“Rosemary was creative, wasn’t she?”
“You can’t remove him,” I said again. “I had a sorcerer far stronger than you check and even he said it’s not possible. Attempting to force him out would kill him, and you would obviously rather have him alive if you didn’t kill him the second you found out where he was.”
It was a guess, but it would explain why Mars had patiently waited us out and then asked me to give him up rather than taking him by force.
Except Mars's laugh was almost giddy. “The sorcerer lied to you.”
“He wouldn’t!” But even as the denial left my mouth, his reaction made me doubt. Why would Elliot lie to me about something like that?
“Oh, but he did! Such an obvious loophole, I’m honestly disappointed in Rosemary. The truth your sorcerer didn’t want to share? It’s going to be far too easy to take that demon from you. He could easily have set him free, and now it’s too late.”
I shook my head, but Mars only turned to dig through one of the many shelves stuffed with books and jars and various items. When he turned back to face me, there was a gun in his hand and a smile on his face.
“It’s so simple. All I have to do is kill you.”
The blood drained from my face. That explained why Elliot didn’t tell me. I supposed I should be grateful the sorcerer wasn’t willing to kill me, but now I was going to take Keir down with me. He was going to be tied to the man who’d nearly ended both of our lives. The one responsible for tearing him away from my grandmother.
My knees ached on the cold, hard ground, but I couldn’t force myself to stand. Couldn’t even manage to stop shaking as I faced my last moments.
“Is the spell ready?” Mars asked.
I was confused at first, but then another man appeared next to the second circle. A mage. Even if I had the slightest chance of finding a way to take out Mars, there was no way I could take down two mages. Especially not while trapped inside a circle.
The man spread some kind of powder along the edge of the circle and checked the book on the ground next to him. “Ready.”
The man’s dark eyes moved to me and the hunger in them made me shudder. But it wasn’t me he wanted to get his hands on, it was Keir.
“Who is that? What are you doing?” I demanded. There was no way Mars would give up the demon he’d been after for decades and just hand him over to another mage.
Mars smiled. “Creating a new era of magic users. One where sorcerers are no longer special. Where your birth isn’t the only thing that decides how powerful you can be. Archmages will soon sit at the top of the power structure. We will control demons, our lives eternal, only growing stronger over time. We won’t need blood lines or names or genes to make people see our worth. No one will be able to deny my power ever again. Not Eastbend, not the covens, not the council, no one.”
“No one needs that kind of power. This is going to get you killed.”
“I don’t want to hear that from a Blackwood witch,” Mars sneered.
“I’m a Blackwood witch with no power, the spell that’s trapping the demon inside me syphons my magic into the spell. It consumes all of it. You won’t be able to keep a demon under your control, their magic isn’t even compatible with yours.”
Mars laughed. “Did you forget? Witchcraft is a neutral magic, and anyone can learn it.”
“Witchcraft isn’t strong enough to control a demon!” I insisted.
“And yet, here you are.”
“That’s different, I’m not controlling him!”
“Maybe you’re right,” Mars agreed. “Basic witchcraft certainly has its limits, but then that’s not all we have to work with, is it?”
Mars and the other mage sliced open their arms and held them over the summoning spell. The blood pooled onto the floor and trailed along the lines of circle. Blood magic in a place with energy like this, it would make the spell stronger, but still.
“That won’t be enough,” I insisted.
“Of course not,” Mars agreed. “But as long as you don’t bleed out too quickly, your life should feed it all the power we need.”
I barely had time to scramble backwards before the impact slammed into my shoulder and I crashed back against the concrete. My head pounded from where it smacked the hard floor, but I barely noticed over the agony in my shoulder. Fire burned through my body, the spell cracking apart as what must have been an anchor point was destroyed.
Gasping in pain, I forced my eyes open to check the damage. It wasn’t a simple bullet hole left behind, my collarbone and all the bones in my shoulder were shattered, my arm was useless and blood poured out of me at an alarming rate. The gun had to have been magically enhanced to cause damage like that.
And then my shoulder was the least of my worries as they tore Keir away from me. After so long together, it felt like a piece of my own soul was being ripped apart and I clung to him, refusing to let go. But in the end, I wasn’t strong enough to hold on. My own screams rang in my ears as Keir’s pain threatened to drown me. He was terrified of being under the control of these monsters, but once again, the magic-less witch could do nothing to help him.
The circle beneath me went dead and Mars marched over to where I was panting on the ground. He grabbed me by the shirt and dragged me to the edge of the second circle, jarring my fucked up shoulder the whole way. I screamed again, and this time there was an answering cry, one filled with rage and pain.
Mars dropped me at the edge of the circle where my life would feed the spell that trapped Keir. I turned my head to see him crouched in the center of the circle, head in his hands, dark hair cascading over his shoulders, his smoky gray skin covered with markings that looked almost like tattoos, but were likely natural to his kind. And then his dark eyes met mine, filled with pain. I’d never seen this form in my life, but everything about him was familiar somehow.
Tears spilled from my eyes. This wasn’t right. He was mine . Mars broke the cage that held Keir to me. I’d wanted to free him, and yet I couldn’t let him go.
“I’m sorry.”
The words weren’t enough, but it was too late for anything more.
Keir’s body melted into the shadows, only to reform at my side. His hands pressed at the confines of the spell, unable to touch me. He punched the barrier, only to be thrown backwards. There was nothing he could do now. My life was once again holding him prisoner.
Using my working arm, I reached for him, knowing there was no way to actually touch him. I winced in pain as the move put pressure on my mangled shoulder and I fell pathetically short, my hand barely reaching my side where it dropped into the pool of blood spreading out beneath me.
Keir was once again distracted by the fight against the mages trying to bring him under their control. The pain in my shoulder rivaled the empty ache in my chest. But beneath it all, there was something else. A faint pressure building, barely noticeable beneath the pain.
I pressed my bloody hands to the circle beneath me and the energy thrummed under my palms. Magic. Now that the spell trapping Keir was broken, I could feel it responding to me. I was already dizzy from the blood loss, but activating the existing magic beneath me wouldn’t take much. I was already bleeding out in a stronger circle than the one my life was feeding. All I had to do was reactivate the spell under my control and my life would feed the magic within the blood magic circle instead. It wouldn’t deactivate the summoning circle, but without my death feeding it, it would weaken it significantly. It would give Keir a chance.
My grandmother hadn’t shown me much, but basic protection rituals were everyday magic for a witch like her. We’d done them together every time I stayed with her. Adding the magic of the circle beneath me, and it should be enough to pull my power back to myself and my own circle. It was only a matter of time before I lost consciousness, but my life would feed the magic until it was gone. It had to be enough.
My fingers moved, tracing symbols in blood as the words formed on my lips. Barely a whisper, but bringing forth strong memories that gave the words power. Rooted in my history, a prayer from my ancestors passed down through generations. I was the last Blackwood, and though it was far from the first time I’d recited those words, it was the first time the magic in my bloodline responded.
The circle below me warmed in a way it hadn’t when Mars used it. The lines glowed, pushing against the barrier of the second circle until it closed off completely.
The surge of magic drew Mars’s attention and his eyes snapped to me when his spell weakened. He rushed over, only to be stopped by the new barrier of my spell. As long as my life fed this circle, he couldn’t get any closer.
“Keep going!” he snapped at the other mage as he cast a spell in his palm.
Shit . My protection spell would keep him from entering, but I didn’t know how long it would hold up against his attacks.
He threw the spell and it smashed against the barrier. My magic wavered but held. For now. With no other choice, I dragged my fingers through my blood again, and started my ritual over. All I could do was keep casting. As long as I could, as long as it took until Keir could break free.
Another spell battered against my barrier and I felt the magic wanting to fall. A wave of dizziness washed over me, but I held firm, forcing my fingers to move and praying harder. Keir gave up his life to save mine. He'd protected me more times than I could count. I couldn’t die without giving him a chance to live.