43. POWER BEGETS POWER #2
Just as that realization hit her square in the chest, the man confirmed it, stepping over his son with an aggrieved, “Jesus Christ. Never send a boy to do a man’s job.
” He sighed loudly and shook his head at the sorcerers, incapacitated on the ground.
“That’s the last time I let you lead anything, Balty. ”
Balty? For the tiniest of moments, Embry felt horrified for Balthazar that his own father treated him this way. It was a realization that fell away to the certainty that Balthazar hadn’t masterminded this. He’d played a role. And he did his job exactly as prescribed.
Now his father took the credit and the reins, shouting a direct order.
“Sorcerers, drain the well!”
Those words must have been etched deep in Balthazar’s soul, because even though he was still prone and untied, something surged within him. Like the first tremors of an earthquake. Then he began to visibly vibrate, jittering across the stone.
His father loomed above him and the graveyard, drawing his arms upward as if accepting a fount of magic from the sky, but instead, Embry was close enough to see as oily, dark magic revved within Balthazar like an airplane engine facing a takeoff.
The ground beneath her feet began to shake as the incapacitated sorcerers started to visibly vibrate.
And suddenly it was crystal clear to Embry what was going on here. With the order, the coordinated vibration, the mention of the well.
The sorcerers were really trying. Just as Balthazar had promised. Even incapacitated, they could access and drain their dark well of power. Like remote start on a car.
“Everyone, shield!” Embry shouted at the top of her lungs.
All around, the sorcerers began to shudder and shake at a new pitch and frequency.
Were they going to combust? Explode? Tops off and lava flowing, mowing down and burning everyone and everything in their path?
They were going to go off like an atomic bomb. Take the witches with them. The graveyard. The house, the school, the town. Heck, the whole island was in danger. She couldn’t let that happen. She wouldn’t let that happen.
Shielded as best she could, Embry inched toward Balthazar’s father, hoping he might be so caught in his revelry that she could lay a hand on him and short-circuit the whole crew from the head.
Crouched low, she reached out, aiming to strike the skin above his ankle.
All she had to do was dart her hand out, shove aside his pant leg enough to make contact with his skin, and—
Strong hands hauled her up and back.
Embry smacked against a solid chest; her waist caged by an arm clad in the unmistakable sleeve of a black motorcycle jacket.
Then his face was right next to hers. Balthazar’s eyes bulged, the skin surrounding his grimacing smile slack and waxy, as if melting off his bones under the pressure.
Every vein in his face and neck pulsed black, distended with magic, ugly.
“You’ll always be mine, my love. Always, always,” Balthazar whispered, every word cloying, even as he tapped into his role as a sorcerer, his magic climbing again to reach the fever pitch of his family. “I love you with my heart and soul. I will never let you go!”
Unfortunately, he meant it, thanks to her perfectly cast love spell.
A new curse sank into Embry’s exposed skin—something powerful enough to freeze the magic in her veins. She lost all connection to it—she couldn’t stun him, zap him, or otherwise use magic to get away. It was blocked.
Suddenly, Embry was as helpless as a normal human, powerless to do anything except struggle against his ironclad grip. The cinnamon and sumac scent of him stung her nose as the sweat soaking his shirt dampened her back. Ew.
Nauseous, Embry tried to gauge if vomiting on him would do any good at all, but abandoned it for a more direct approach, donkey-kicking backward with all the might she never actually used on Rye. She connected with his shins.
Balthazar’s hold on her broke just long enough that Embry lunged for Hiram’s statue with her newly freed hand, caught the chiseled elbow crook, and leveraged herself so she could again donkey-kick behind her, going for the sorcerer’s shins a second time, plus his knees, thighs, and family jewels.
He dodged. Fine—she stomped on one of his feet. Apparently, those big black motorcycle boots were more for form than function because Balthazar cried out.
Then, as he groped for her, his whole body jackhammering as she willed her magic to flood back, free of his blocking spell but not of its effects, something fell from the sky, smacking Balthazar in the head. It bounced off his perfectly styled waves with a wet sound and onto the tomb lid.
A half-eaten rodent.
In the sky, a flash of red tail feathers.
Merlin!
“You can’t have her, you dumb bird!” Balthazar spat as the hawk circled above, leftovers properly discarded on someone who he clearly did not like. “You’re not even human! Don’t you ever do that again!”
The hawk screeched right back—and that’s when Embry heard it.
Over the keening of the rising magic. The racing of her own galloping heart. The blood thundering in her ears.
Running footsteps.
Hundreds of them.
Then Merlin looped over the towering trees marking the gated entrance to Raven’s Head.