Chapter 37 Rage
Rage
The magic that left his fingers let out a sound like a peal of thunder inside the stone tower. It shook the walls, the floor, the ceiling. It made me light-headed, like it sucked every molecule of oxygen from the air, and filled it with electrical charge.
He aimed all of it at his father’s back.
I saw the fire flare behind his father’s outline as it hit, blindingly bright, so bright I couldn’t see anything but those silver eyes––
––then the magic ricocheted backwards.
Terror hit me, but there was absolutely nothing I could do.
That insanely strong bolt of magic slammed into Bones’s chest, flinging him backwards like he’d been hit with a swinging wrecking ball.
He flew backwards so fast, I couldn’t even see him go.
I glimpsed him briefly when he crashed into the far wall of his room.
I couldn’t comprehend his face, the position of his body, his condition, or even exactly what had happened, not until he’d already fallen from the cracked stone.
My mind stopped.
I could only stand there, frozen.
I couldn’t suck in a breath, not even to scream.
For those few seconds I only stood there, shaking, fists clenched, begging him to move, to open his eyes, I was sure he was dead. He looked like half his bones were broken. Blood streaked the stone, and within seconds, his skin looked grey.
I forgot his father entirely until the elder mage spoke.
“Idiotic little fool,” he said savagely. “It’s not like I didn’t warn him a thousand times, since before he was ten years old.”
I turned to find Malefic Bones staring over his shoulder at his own son, disgust and fury etched into his features. He gripped an Anubis-topped cane in one hand, his knuckles white. I couldn’t help noticing the gold Anubis was bloody.
“Now I’ll have to play nursemaid until he’s of use.” The disgust grew audible in his voice. “All because he couldn’t control himself around a half-breed bitch’s cunt––”
I screamed.
I screamed again, louder, and couldn’t stop.
The tall, black-haired mage turned on me, silver eyes flashing, as if he’d briefly forgotten I was there.
His lip curled. His angular features stood out in the sunlight that lit his face from one side.
I saw the coldness in his expression, the calculation, the shrewdness in his eyes.
I felt the hair’s breadth of silence before he decided to turn his magic on me.
I saw him start to raise his hand.
The magic I’d been gearing up as he searched the room ignited for real.
My monocersus primal was nowhere to be seen.
The sun over my head flared out in a bright burst, the tendrils of magic reaching outwards.
In a bare instant, I felt the black crystal there also, flashing brighter as it merged with my sun.
Together, they ripped through the black tendrils of the elder Bones’s magical shields like they were tissue paper.
The hand of mine not holding the crystal was already performing its own mudra as I muttered a curse Bones had taught me only a week before.
“Mech sveta rassekayet…” I hissed, twisting my wrist.
My curse found Malefic Bones with absolutely nothing in its way. The arm Caelum’s father had raised got hit right at the bicep, exactly at the point where I’d aimed it.
The spell severed the whole thing slantwise, through skin, muscle, tendon and bone like a sword through a silk scarf. The cut was so quick, so neat, the blood took another second to spurt after the arm hit the stone floor with a sickening thump.
It seemed to take a second longer for Malefic Bones to realize what I’d done.
He let out a disbelieving scream.
He stumbled backwards and sideways, out of the mouth of the closet door, just in time, as I threw another curse at him.
I missed him with that one, another severing curse I’d aimed at his neck.
The bolt whistled past and impacted the far wall, blowing a chunk out of the stone, letting through another beam of sunlight.
My rage flared hotter as I emerged from the the opening, looking for him.
I could already feel he’d rebuilt part of his shield.
I didn’t stop to think about why or how I could know that, or why I could see everything so clearly right then, as if the entire tower had been mapped out from some higher part of me, hovering far over the rest of my body.
I didn’t question how I knew his shields wouldn’t save him.
I saw the bolt coming when he aimed a heart-stopping spell at me, and I easily maneuvered out of the way, even as I threw up a much stronger shield of my own.
I just missed him with a skull-cracking curse, then with a body-paralyzing spell, before he darted into the lavatory and slammed shut the door.
He’d done something to staunch the loss of blood from his arm.
He was fast, I would give him that.
It wouldn’t do him any good.
I could feel him weakening. While his current condition probably wouldn’t kill him, he was in serious danger of passing out.
I suspected he’d gone inside the lavatory to buy himself time while he found some way to stop the blood-loss entirely, or even to regenerate or clone some portion of the blood he’d already lost.
Again, it wouldn’t save him.
It was strange how entirely calculating my thoughts felt.
I’d fallen into a blank, no-mind space, one that operated in pure tactics, with absolute indifference to assessing my own motives.
I didn’t really know who I was in that space, or whether what I was doing was right or wrong or even particularly smart, but I knew with one hundred percent certainty what I intended to do.
I was going to kill that son of a bitch.
I was going to rip him apart, and then I would think about the rest.
I’d already shoved my mother’s crystal in the pocket of Caelum’s joggers, doing it to free my other hand after the elder Bones disappeared from the closet door’s opening.
Now I stalked after him, and geared up the magic in my sun primal again.
I decided on a spell, and raised both hands towards the lavatory door, about to rip it off its hinges––
When the door behind me slammed open before I could.
I turned around where I stood, my hands still up, magic running up and down my arms like an out-of-control electrical current.
I was on the verge of releasing the spell, of defending myself and Bones, when something in me paused long enough for me to make out the features of the mage standing in front.
It was Valor.
Valor La Fey, my cousin.
His eyes stared at me in shock, so wide it might have looked comical if not for everything else that sparked and careened in my mind.
I stared back at him, uncomprehending at first. Then something clicked inside my head.
I saw the Praecuri uniform, and it registered that he wasn’t alone.
Behind him, I saw the stairwell crammed with other bodies, all wearing uniforms alike or fairly similar to his.
The magical charge left me like someone had pulled a plug, or maybe flipped a switch.
My arms dropped.
Suddenly, I was exhausted, like I’d just run a marathon after not sleeping for a week.
I stared at my cousin, and nearly swayed on my feet.
I saw Valor’s jaw harden, right as his wife, Esalia, appeared at his side, her expression even more confused than her husband’s when she saw me. Then after a swift glance around the room, her eyes hardened. It was Esalia who ended up speaking first.
“Where is he, Leda?” she demanded.
I didn’t move.
My eyes flickered to Bones, who still hadn’t moved.
They both followed my stare, and Valor audibly sucked in a breath.
“Is he dead?” I asked.
Neither of them answered me.
Then Valor looked back at me. “Where’s his father?” he asked, his voice suddenly cold. “Where’s Malefic?”
The question confused me at first, until I glanced back over my shoulder.
I stepped to one side, and leaned a hand on the stone wall to steady myself.
“He’s in there.” I motioned towards the lavatory. I jerked my jaw towards the closet a beat later. “Except his arm. That’s in there.”
Esalia flinched, then exchanged looks with her husband. Valor’s jaw hardened, then he glanced behind him, and barked out a series of commands.
Only then did everyone enter the room, and only then did it really hit me that they hadn’t.
I watched as Valor and Esalia crossed the stone floor, their steps purposeful.
In addition to the black uniforms, they wore heavy capes and thick boots, their clothing and hair wet and sprinkled with snow.
Within seconds, it seemed, a whole crowd was inside the tower, as the rest of the agents and officers who’d been in the stairwell followed behind.
I could barely comprehend the numbers, or really focus on their faces.
I was already aiming my feet in Bones’s direction.
I wove through the crowd of Praecuri and other uniforms, uniforms I didn’t know well enough to identify, as they began surrounding the lavatory door.
I didn’t meet eyes, ignored the stares, not understanding or really hearing the words of the few who tried to talk to me, or to warn me to stay out of the way as they made the situation safe.
I didn’t listen closely when my cousin began yelling through the wooden door, telling the mage inside they were coming in, warning him that if he resisted them in any way, he risked physical and magical injury, if not death.
I made it to Bones before the lavatory door opened.
A mage and a witch were already crouched beside him when I got there, likely ordered to check him out by my cousin. I ignored them, too. I sank to my knees on his other side, and stared at his closed eyes and half-broken, deathly pale face.
I reached out tentatively, afraid to touch him, but needing to know.
When my fingers pressed lightly against his throat, I choked on a sob when I felt the hard pulse of blood beneath my fingers.
“We already did that,” the mage grumbled. “We could’ve told you he’s alive.”
I touched his face, tears blurring my vision. “Why aren’t you helping him? Why are you just fucking sitting here? Help him!”
I saw the witch and the mage exchange a look.
My magic geared up without warning as fury exploded through me, making my hands shake. I could barely force out words.
“Help him!” I demanded, glaring between them. “Are you magiphysicians? Are you field medics? Why are you here, if you can’t help him?”
The mage blinked at me, as if nervous at what he saw in my face.
Then he nodded, once. I watched like a hawk as he moved carefully closer to Bones, and I had to struggle to keep my mouth shut when I saw him place his hand on Bones’s chest. In the end, as soon as he began casting diagnostic spells over him, I couldn’t.
“If you hurt him, I’ll kill you,” I said thickly.
I saw the mage stiffen, then exchange a wide-eyed look with his witch partner.
I felt their alarm, but they were both helping now, so I didn’t care.
I watched them cast diagnostics over different parts of Bones’s body, frustrated I couldn’t read them.
I felt part of their attention still on me, but they never stopped their work, so again, I didn’t care.
I felt their concern whisper around me, mixed with wariness.
I heard their attempts to calm me when I continued to kneel there, shaking as I watched them work.
Nothing they said really penetrated.
I needed them to stop him from dying. I didn’t care about anything else.
I tried to explain what happened, hoping the details might help. I described just how large the spell had been that hit him, how far he’d flown. I had no idea know if the words I used were coherent, or if anything I said made sense.
Something I did or said must have gone too far, because at some point, I felt a spell wash over me from one of the Magical agents who appeared behind the two medics. Whatever it was, it felt like a thick blanket being thrown over my head.
Everything went quiet and soft and dark.
Sometime after that, I couldn’t feel or see anything at all.