Chapter 34 Locked In
Locked In
Istumbled out of his arms and into a rack of clothes on hangars right in front of where we reappeared. I let out a gasp, gripping fabric in both hands as I fought to remain on my feet.
I’d completely forgotten we’d been drinking up until that moment, and that I was likely still off-balance from draining my magic with that bloodfyre spell.
I turned around in time to see Bones hold up his hands, and close his eyes, pulling his own magic down from that flaming black crystal. His eyes still closed, he made a series of elaborate mudras, too fast for me to follow, muttering a string of castings under his breath.
I felt my chest compress as several layers of chimaeras descended over the tower room.
Symbols rotated behind my eyes, silver and gold, black and red, blinding me briefly as my own magic tried to make sense of them.
The dome-like shell of shielding locked down around the walls of the room, the staircase, the door to his room and the one to the tower below.
It felt like being locked inside a crystal ball.
He’d phased us right back to his room in Malcroix Mansion.
I was inside his tower, inside his walk-in clothes closet, where I’d once hid from his father.
I was still gasping, fighting to right my vision, to slow my heart, when the reality of that, of what that really meant, suddenly reached me.
Maybe for the first time, it really hit me just how utterly bizarre it was, that he could do that.
According to that first book I’d read on caelum ignis, theoretically, Bones might be able to travel through time.
Even without that, it was almost unbelievable what he’d just done, particularly considering the magical protections standing between Bonescastle and the academy grounds, not to mention those that protected Malcroix Mansion itself.
Bones walked through all of that like a ghost, like they didn’t exist at all, and from what he’d told me, he’d been doing it since he was a child.
His father had managed to hide that from the world.
Bones exhaled a relieved-sounding breath, pulling my eyes back to him.
His white-blond hair was stuck partly to his neck with sweat.
His gold eyes looked glassy, but also preternaturally sharp with light.
He didn’t look drunk. He looked like he was in pain, high on adrenaline, and completely amped up on magic and emotion.
Now that he’d finished dropping what felt like a deadly number of protections over his bedroom and tower, he looked over at me, his face flushed, breathing hard enough that he was almost panting.
“Stay here,” was all he said.
Before I could get out a word, he melted back into the wall.
I stared at where he’d just been.
I don’t know how long I stared. I felt like some part of me just glitched, and refused to believe what I’d just seen, so it waited for him to reappear.
He didn’t reappear.
My breath shortened until I grew light-headed.
I didn’t look away from the wall but my mind started to move again, if in disjointed fits and starts.
I remembered what he’d said, what I’d dismissed at the time as him trying to appease me long enough to get us the hell out of there as we ran down the cobblestone road towards the school.
I’ll come back for them.
Staring at the stone wall I slowly clenched my hands into fists.
Heat exploded in my chest, bringing up a gasping, pained cry of pure fury and frustration as the reality of where he’d gone came crashing down on me.
I fought to reach Bones through the thick chimaeras he’d buried me inside.
Caelum? I thought. I bit my tongue, keeping my thoughts calm-sounding with an effort.
Caelum! You need to come back here! We’ll go to Forsooth, all right?
He can send the Praecuri and British Magical Enforcement.
You can’t do this. You’re too much of a target to handle this on your own, and you’re bloody injured!
Silence.
Worse, it felt like I really was shouting from inside a glass ball.
I could feel my thoughts bouncing back at me, dissipating into nothing.
I used my hands to form a mudra, concentrating on the symbols in my head, and on the recipient of the message I wanted to send.
I quickly thought out a second, slightly less furious message.
Once I had it clear in my mind, I performed a second set of mudras, mirrors to the first I’d done, and thrust the spell out from me.
I felt it leave me.
Then I felt it impact and shatter against the chimaera’s walls.
“FUCK!” I shouted hoarsely.
I ran down the Northwest Tower’s circular staircase, still using my hands to perform mudras as I attempted to send messages first to Forsooth, then to my cousin, Valor.
I couldn’t get past Bones’s shields. I reached the bottom of the stairs, tried to push open the door, but it wouldn’t budge.
It felt like someone had bolted it closed from the outside.
I swore again, that time aiming it furiously at Bones.
I almost hoped he would hear it, and feel the depth of my rage, but I also didn’t want to distract him, given where he might be now.
I hoped like hell that Alaric, Nyx, and Luc were already on their way back, and that Bones had found them and was heading back with them.
Maybe they’d already made it through the Malcroix gate.
Maybe the shield Bones put on his tower meant he couldn’t reach me, either.
I slammed a spell against the handle of the door, and the magic groaned but didn’t move. I tried a number of unlocking spells, but none of them worked. I tried them again, this time stacking one upon the other in an attempt to strengthen the magic behind it.
That didn’t work, either.
I stood there, panting, and fought to think.
I could just stand there and scream, but I highly doubted that would do anything.
Almost no one would be in the Mansion, particularly on New Year’s Eve.
It wasn’t even midnight yet, and anyway, it was likely no one would hear me even if I screamed myself hoarse and someone stood directly outside the door.
There was a very strong chance Bones’s shields blocked sound as effectively as they blocked spells.
No, I had to break through the chimaeras themselves.
Realizing I was still filtering everything through the monocerus primal, I shifted directly to the sun primal over my head. The instant I did, I could feel the black crystal up there as well, its cold black flames coiling around the glass-like stone.
Gods. Could I contact Bones through his primal?
It seemed likely I could, but again, I didn’t want to throw him, not when he might be fighting for his life, or for the life of one of the others.
I pressed my fingers to my temples, and tried to decide what to do.
Panic was screwing with my ability to think.
I decided not to bother Bones. I would focus on getting out of here instead, and sending him help in any way I could. I aimed another door unlocking spell at the frame.
That time, it slid through the shields like they weren’t there. I heard a low shudder of metal against the hinges and stone, then the door popped open.
Adrenaline reignited through my blood.
Immediately, I sent a message to Forsooth, telling him an attack was occurring in downtown Bonescastle, led by Dark Cathedral and that Bones, Luc, Alaric, Nyx, and several others from the school were there.
Already moving fast down the corridor, I sent him a second message explaining more, using images of the woman with the dark blue hair, the mage I’d set on fire, and the one Bones fought with ice.
I didn’t show him Bones phasing, but instead showed us running down the cobblestone street towards the Malcroix gates.
I was already a dozen paces from the Northwest Tower by the time I sent my second message, moving at a fast walk, nearly a jog.
I broke into a run as soon as the spell left my fingers, aiming my feet for the Northeast Tower, which stood directly across from Bones’s quarters all the way on the opposite end of the east wing.
I didn’t have long to wonder if Forsooth got my messages.
I felt a ping in my magic as I ran, then I saw Forsooth emerge from the darkness behind my eyes.
I’ve contacted the Praecuri, the translucent Forsooth said, his voice strangely blurred but unmistakably his.
They were already aware of the problem, and have people in Bonescastle now.
Your cousin tells me they received reports of violence and illegal spell-casting at the fireworks grounds.
They’ve got the square and park surrounded.
He paused, almost like a recording with a slight glitch.
Come to my tower, he said next. We’ll speak more here. It is unwise to send too much via magical missives right now, even here, inside Malcroix.
His voice paused.
Try to remain calm, my friend, he added, quieter.
I should have relaxed, if only because the Praecuri were already on the scene, and it sounded like they might even have things under control, but somehow that didn’t reassure me at all.
Forsooth hadn’t said a word about any of my friends.
He hadn’t said a thing about whether they’d been found, if they were safe, if anyone had died.
Violence. Illegal spells.
If there had been deaths, would he have said so?
I couldn’t talk to him in my head the way I could with Bones.
Anyway, if that had been a wise avenue for communication, or even a remote possibility, Forsooth would have suggested it, or else he simply would have answered me that way himself.
Instead he’d said it wasn’t safe to send more messages via spells, and I didn’t want to stop long enough to do that, anyway.
In the end, there was nothing to do but run.
I lengthened my strides, sprinting as fast as I could along the north corridor between the school’s two wings.
In my head, I tried to calculate how much time had passed.