40. Prodigal
Prodigal
Ilooked up at Bones, shocked suddenly by the immediacy of his presence.
His hand, still sparking with magic, didn’t lower, but remained aimed at the body of his father.
I didn’t see any grief in his eyes as he stared down at his father’s lifeless body.
I wasn’t sure what he even understood. Rage stood out in his glowing gold eyes.
He stared at Malefic unflinchingly, his eyes as hard and cold as diamonds.
He looked like he was restraining himself with an effort.
He also looked like he didn’t fully believe he was dead.
If I could have spoken to him through my bruised and swollen throat, I might have told him it was all right, that it was over, that Malefic wouldn’t be getting up. For some reason, I strongly got the impression he neither wanted nor needed that from me.
I could feel his awareness of my presence at his side, and maybe that was enough.
I could feel him relaxing into me, into my magic, but I wasn’t sure how conscious he was of that, either.
His attention never left the dark wizard in front of us.
I could feel him struggling to process it somehow, maybe just to see it as real.
I didn’t want to take a single second of that away from him.
I wanted to touch him, desperately, but now wasn’t the time for that, either.
After a few more minutes, he spoke in a low, deep voice.
“It’s gone,” he said. “I can feel it.”
I nodded. I could almost feel it through him.
Bones already felt… different.
“Yes,” he said, swallowing. “Different.”
I felt him turn it over in his mind, fighting to see it not as something transitory, but as something new.
The burn lines on his neck from the collar stood out on his skin, but I swore I could see more color in him.
His longish, platinum blond hair looked different against skin that seemed to have more life in it, and flesh that already seemed to be changing.
He lowered his arm, and the magic coiling around it began to lose some of its charge. I looked down at it, then back at his face, and that time, he reached out, offering me his hand.
I took it in relief, gripping his fingers tightly.
We were still standing there, when I grew aware something had new had changed.
I felt the chimaeras around the school shudder, like they were being altered, reconfigured.
That oppressive weight I’d felt on them when Dark Cathedral locked them down was starting to lift.
I looked around Worm Hall, and realized Magicals weren’t fighting anymore.
They appeared to be fleeing.
I looked back at Bones.
A different fear hit me, looking at him, feeling the Praecuri descending.
“We should go,” I urged, tugging on his arm.
That fear blossomed into something closer to panic when I thought about all the newspaper articles, the towns on fire, the murders all attributed to him.
They’d want a scapegoat.
With Malefic dead, of course that would fall on his son.
No one would ever believe he’d been coerced to do those things, and even if they did, it was too likely it would get out, what Bones actually was.
The interrogations would raise too many questions.
There would be Oracles looking at him, Obeah.
If they held him in custody, it would only be a matter of time before they figured it out, and then the sentence would be death.
After everything, he’d be murdered by the King, and the Court of Magique.
He looked at me, as if feeling it all through me.
I tugged on his arm. “Let’s go,” I whispered. “We have to go, Bones. Now.”
I felt the weight of understanding reach him, right before his mouth pursed.
“I’m not sure anyplace will be far enough, wife,” he told me quietly.
Before I could answer, a different voice interrupted our quiet back and forth, causing both of us to turn our heads. I’d been so absorbed in Bones, so oblivious to everything else happening in the Hall, I hadn’t even noticed him walking towards us from the direction of the double doors.
Now I turned to stare at a Magical walking towards us, his bear primal lumbering along next to him in its strangely rollicking gait. He looked vaguely singed, his bushy hair more disheveled and smoky than I’d ever seen it, but he wore a disarmingly wide smile.
“Oh, I think you’ll be quite all right where you are,” Gideon Forsooth said, winking at me before he widened his smile at Bones. “After all, you’re the heroes who brought down the violent terrorist, Malefic Bones. Are you not? I am told there were many witnesses.”
We both blinked at him.
I’m sure our faces were completely blank.
Forsooth walked up to both of us and clapped us each on the arm, one with each of his wizened hands. He surprised me even more when he reached for Bones when he got near enough, and enveloped him in a hug.
I only caught a bare glimpse of Bone’s face as he entered the embrace, but I strongly got the impression he only accepted it because he was too bewildered to do anything else.
“The fighting is still going on, but it’s mostly a clean up exercise now,” Forsooth said, matter of fact. He raised a clay mug to his lips, sipping what looked like a very rich milk tea.
“I’m told there is still a small hold-out of Dark Cathedrals on campus,” he continued somberly.
“They fled to the north but haven’t been able to escape the school grounds.
A few dozen agents from G.O.R.E. and the another group of the King’s Guard have them trapped inside the bestiary, but I’m told the situation is under control, and should be resolved shortly. ”
“Where’s my brother?” I asked, gripping my own mug between my hands.
I could speak again, mostly due to the ministrations of Blackstone, who’d handed me two different vials when he saw me, pulling them out of his satchel and placing them in my hand without so much as a hello.
I drank down the violet, pearlescent potion without a word in return, and it had tasted almost sweet, despite seeming to burn my throat from the inside out.
The second vial, a dark red, tasted like burnt cat hair but soothed the worst of my pain.
“You dosed them,” I said to Corvid, as soon as I could speak again. “You and Luc. After telling me that was a stupid, reckless idea only a half-human would come up with.”
Blackstone shrugged, unapologetic.
“It was,” he intoned flatly. “…Stupid. You could have easily been killed.”
Morag perched on the back of his chair, and chortled like she was laughing.
“Your brother is fine,” Forsooth was saying now, and my focus returned to the present. “He, along with most of your friends, are being attended to at hospital, along with a significant chunk of our student body, our faculty, and a number of members of law enforcement.”
At what must have been an alarmed look from me, Forsooth held up a calming hand.
“They are all fine, Ms. Shadow,” he insisted calmly.
“Minor magical injuries at best. The group of them participated in a minor skirmish in the foyer, along with a number of your classmates, but there were no casualties, I am told. As at that point in the morning’s events, the Dark Cathedral adherents they encountered were not exactly of sound mind… ”
Forsooth raised a pointed eyebrow in Blackstone’s direction.
“…and were really only looking to escape,” he added. “We thought it was best they be checked out along with everyone else––”
“Except us,” Bones muttered under his breath.
“––and I wished to speak to you both alone,” he said, a touch sharper. He looked at me, his eyebrow arching. “So we could get our stories straight, as I believe the human expression goes.”
I frowned. I looked between him and Blackstone, wary.
“Our stories?” I pursed my lips. “What stories would those be?”
Forsooth gave me a faint, knowing smile, like he didn’t believe for a second I wasn’t understanding him. He was right, really. I did understand.
Well, part of it, at least.
“We need to explain how Malefic died,” I said, feeling a ripple of nerves. “That’s part of it, isn’t it?” I glanced at Bones, suddenly worried. “Do they think Caelum did it?”
Bones flinched a little when I used his first name, and squeezed my fingers in his.
“It’s fine if they think that,” he began brusquely, but Forsooth cut him off.
“They don’t,” he interrupted, glancing at Bones. “Think that. Witnesses to the event all insist you never released your magic against him, and were only standing there, and appeared to be defending and protecting your wife.”
Forsooth looked at me, and I bit my lip.
“So they know I did it?” I asked, blunt.
Forsooth’s brow furrowed. “But you didn’t do it, Ms. Shadow.”
I pursed my lips, and shook my head. “I did, though.”
“No.” Forsooth lifted a finger. “You may have…” He hesitated. “Given permission? In a sense? But that is not the same as having done the deed yourself.”
“Was that my primal?” I blurted. “My divinity one, I mean?”
Gideon Forsooth smiled. I saw genuine amusement and a whisper of cleverness in his eyes when he slowly shook his head. He glanced at Bones then, and his lips slid a little higher.
“I do not believe so, no,” he said, still smiling shrewdly. He nodded at Bones. “It was his.”
I frowned again. “His?” I looked at Bones, who blinked back at me. I looked back at Forsooth. “But it went through me.”
“Of course,” Forsooth said, holding out his hands, still gripping his mug.
“It didn’t have a choice, did it? Malefic had constrained it in every way imaginable.
Chaining it to Dark Cathedral. Denying it the ability to defend itself, or to defend the wizard it had chosen to protect with its magic.
Divinities don’t generally take kindly to being ordered around and enslaved and having their magic constrained by mere mortals. ”
I frowned at that, looking thoughtfully at Bones.
“Was it Anubis?” I asked, speaking without thinking.
Forsooth chuckled, leaning back in his chair as Bones stared at me in shock.