23. Occulus
Occulus
When neither of us had spoken for a few seconds longer, Forsooth delicately cleared his throat.
“Ms. Shadow?” he asked politely. “Are you amenable to seeing this now?”
For some reason, I glanced at Blackstone. He had gone back to watching me, sphinx-like, the fingers of one hand lightly touching the side of his face. His nearly white eyes looked dead, as always, and utterly impossible to read.
“Of course,” I said, barely hiding my reluctance as I looked back at Forsooth. “If you think it’s important.”
“I do,” Forsooth said gravely.
I hadn’t been able to reach Bones. I hadn’t dreamt about him, hadn’t heard his thoughts, hadn’t felt him at all really since the attack on the Sanctum.
I’d even gone to Blackstone for help, but after we’d made multiple attempts to reach him through Bones’s and my connection, I was getting worried.
We’d made seven unsuccessful attempts in roughly two weeks, which was probably part of why Blackstone was getting more vicious about Bones.
He thought Bones had cut me off.
I worried about that, too. More than worried, if I was being honest, but I didn’t know what to do about that, either, other than try to keep it from turning into full-blown panic.
Bones had found some way to lock me out.
That, or Malefic had.
I fought to ignore the pain sharpening in my chest at the thought. The anxiety from being cut off from him was growing increasingly difficult to ignore. It was going on three weeks now, by far the longest I’d gone without talking to him since this started.
It was going to become a problem soon, I knew that.
It would become a serious problem not long after that.
I tried not to think about it.
Unfortunately, it was starting to affect me in ways I struggled to hide. I knew Alaric noticed. Jolie seemed to pick up on something wrong, too. With Nyx, there was no way of knowing. She was almost as difficult to read as Blackstone. As for Luc––
“I hope you don’t mind my just jumping into it, then,” Forsooth said, clearing his throat as he raised a hand already rippling with magic. “I think it’s probably better if you see it first, then we can discuss what you think it means.”
Without waiting for my response, he made a number of mudras with the same hand. If he recited any incantations, I didn’t hear them, but I was reasonably sure Forsooth was beyond incantations when it came to a lot of things.
He had his own ways of focusing his magic, including with his bear primal, which currently sat by his chair, staring up at the loops of magical stars cascading from the ends of Forsooth’s fingers.
Those stars gradually swirled into a dense cloud before forming into a large, oval-shaped image that reminded me of a mirror.
It slowly began to sharpen into something more complex.
I’d seen him do something like this before. I hadn’t yet learned the spell, but I knew it was a way of sharing memories between Magicals. I also knew they’d been using it to transmit intelligence, including from inside Dark Cathedral.
At first, the image was dark.
Then, a sparking cloud of magic flared out, shining a deep blood-red. It flew across a long, narrow space, illuminating everything in its path.
Rows of beds grew visible on either side as it flashed by.
Screams erupted in the small space.
The sounds were quickly silenced, but I knew it wasn’t via natural means. I heard Latin recited in a female-sounding voice, and knew it was a sound-deadening spell.
It may have quieted them, but it didn’t stop them moving.
Small bodies ran around in the dark, eyes wide as they bolted for the back of the room, obviously in an attempt to get away.
There was no where to go. The spell had shot through the room’s only door.
Whoever’s vantage point I shared, they were closing the gap to that same door with swift strides, surrounded by cloaked figures.
Seeing those kids, most of whom looked somewhere between eight and ten years old, running, mouths open, caught in silence, somehow made the image more disturbing, not less.
“Here!” someone yelled.
The robed figure whose eyes we shared abruptly turned. It was a strange sensation as the view inside the mirror-like surface jerked sharply to the left.
Another robed figure stood in a second doorway, motioning them over.
“He’s in here!” the same voice said, sounding excited.
I felt sick. I was suddenly sure I didn’t want to see this.
It felt like I got dragged to that doorway, anyway. The person whose eyes I shared walked right up to the robed figure standing there. Both doors appeared to be cut right into the dark grey rock. Our eyes looked into another long room full of beds.
The difference was, I counted four wizards and three witches who held these kids motionless in their beds. The Dark Cathedrals stood at various points around the room, hands up as they used magic to trap the students in their bunks before they could get out.
“Inside,” the witch at the doorway crowed. “Orrin’s got him. He’s in the closet.”
That sick feeling in my gut worsened.
Gods, no. Don’t show me my brother being killed––
I didn’t realized I’d looked away until Forsooth’s gentle voice spoke.
“You’ll want to see this, Leda,’ he prodded gently.
I took a breath, then forced myself to look back at the mirror-like image.
The room had filled with robed figures in the seconds I’d looked away.
Even so, the spells holding the students to their beds had mostly been released.
I saw kids walking over beds as they traveled along the wall in single-file, making their way for the exit.
Once they’d reached the doorway, I saw them sprint down the high, arched corridor, all aiming towards the right, and presumably deeper into the structure.
The adults ignored them.
Rather than trap them with more magic, or even bar the way physically, the Dark Cathedrals seemed to have lost interest in them altogether.
The person whose view we shared clearly came to the same conclusion.
They looked deeper into the dormitory room, past the rows of beds.
A closet stood on the far right, in the deepest part of the room.
The door was open.
The witch I saw standing outside the door was one I recognized, although her hair color had changed.
Rather than midnight blue, like I remembered from the New Years’ Eve fair in Bonescastle, it now shone a deep crimson, the color of blood.
Her irises, instead of turquoise, now exactly matched the new color of her hair.
She was like a warped, twisted version of Miranda’s playfulness with her hair and eye color.
She held up a hand sparking with magic and stared into the closet door, her mouth twitching with mirth.
“Don’t worry,” Sirena said, looking directly at us. “He’s resting now.”
The spy edged forward, moving more cautiously.
Sirena was back to staring at whatever she could see inside that closet. The door and the angle blocked us, but I already knew who I’d see inside.
“He’s pretty,” Sirena said, looking directly at the mirror a second time, and thus at the spy whose eyes we borrowed. “Come see, sister. Hybrid or no, he will make a darling pet.”
I felt sicker.
Even so, I didn’t miss the implications of her words.
The spy was a witch, not a wizard.
I was about to ask Forsooth and Blackstone what, exactly, I was supposed to be gleaning from this, when Sirena’s magic flared hotter.
Lifting her hand and bare arm in the air, she murmured an incantation, something I didn’t recognize.
Her hand and fingers twisted in a delicate series of mudras as she layered different things into her spell.
She looked about to release it, when––
A pulse of magic barreled by where we stood.
It flashed with a blue-green hue, lighting up faces under their hoods.
It exploded into my vision from the right, as if erupting from our witch-spy’s peripheral vision.
It came so close to where she stood, I practically felt a shudder go through her as she reacted to the sheer power behind the bolt.
That ball of magic slammed into Sirena, her arm in particular, extinguishing her magic in an instant.
It didn’t hurt her.
I got the sense it could have, if the wielder had wanted it that way.
Even so, Sirena looked annoyed. She shook her arm, as if the magical blast had stung. She looked like someone had reached out and physically slapped her out of the way. Her blood-red eyes narrowed as she looked past us to someone else.
“Little shit,” she spat. “What in the pharaohs do you think you’re doing?”
The other person didn’t answer.
I saw him first in the very corner of the mirror’s view.
I wanted the witch whose eyes we’d stolen to turn her head, but she didn’t.
Even so, I didn’t doubt it was him. His white hair nearly glowed in the moonlight-like illumination that filled the room.
Without thinking, I’d assumed it was moonlight, that there must be a window somewhere, letting in a view of the night sky.
But it couldn’t be the sky, I remembered; the entire complex was underground, and anyway, the light seemed to be coming from the ceiling.
It had to be a spell.
The witch we were using didn’t look up, so I couldn’t be sure.
Bones appeared next to Sirena then, and I forgot the light.
“Leave it,” he growled.
Sirena stared up at him coldly. From her expression, she was caught between surprise, bewilderment, and fury. More than anything, she seemed shocked he’d dared to interfere. She also looked just the smallest bit wary, even cautious.
Her voice reflected that last thing the most.
“Your father tasked me with ensuring his transport––” she began shortly.
“I’m relieving you of that burden,” Bones growled.
He no longer wore the suit I’d seen on him earlier that day.
He wore all black, something that looked like a uniform but wasn’t, with the same cloak and hood as the rest of them.
Unlike most of them, his hood was down, the fabric fallen, forgotten, to his shoulders.
Smoke darkened part of his hair and I saw what looked like blood and bruises on his hands, glinting in the light alongside his gold rings.
He looked tired, and drained somehow. His skin looked nearly translucent in that odd, blue-white light. He glared at the much shorter witch, his gold eyes still glowing erratically from expending his magic.
“He’s mine,” Bones growled. “Understand me?”
“Arrogant little runt. You think I’ll disobey orders, just because––”
“I think you’ll do whatever the fuck I say,” Bones growled back. “I think you’ll do it because you’ve always had strong survival instincts, Sirena… and because none of this goes against Dark Cathedral, or my father, and you know it.”
His gold eyes turned a few shades colder.
“I can kill you, Sirena,” he enunciated thickly. “If you doubt me, then by all means, continue to stand in my way… sister.”
The two of them stared at one another for a few seconds more.
Sirena ended up being the one to look away.
She folded her arms, still shaking her hand like it had been stung.
“Fine,” she said with equally cold irritation. “Take your little toy, whelp. Play with it while you can. You can answer to your father later when I tell him. I’m sure he’ll find it quite amusing, this sudden display of protectiveness after you refused his offer earlier.”
Bones had already dismissed her.
His eyes shifted around at the crowd of robed witches and wizards standing around them. He glared at all of them, as if emphasizing the point, and the faces I saw staring at him looked uneasy. A few even looked openly fearful of him.
“He’s mine,” he growled again. “Anyone else wish to argue my claim?”
Silence greeted his words.
Bones glared at them a few seconds longer, long enough for eyes to avert, feet to shift.
Once he seemed satisfied he’d gotten his point across, Bones disappeared into the closet.
When he reappeared in the doorway, a few seconds later, I couldn’t help but suck in a breath. He held a limp form in his arms, with closed eyes. It was dark, but there was no mistaking the mess of black hair, or the delicate features.
Arcturus.
I could only stand there, staring, my breath caught in my throat as I watched Bones carry my brother’s limp, unconscious body through the crowd.
He pushed robed witches and wizards aside with his shoulders and elbows as he made his way back in the direction of the door, protecting Arcturus in the cage of his black-clad arms.