Chapter XVI
XVI
Magic pulled from the land of the dead provides the most assured way of acquiring power, for it is the only known means of collecting and transferring the abilities of others.
Familiars are the most potent form of this transition, as they allow transfer of a witch’s full powers to another.
Lesser-known means include soul binds, by which two living witches share ability, and the creation of blood stones, by which a practitioner can distill the essence of a being into a conduit for later use.
Blood stones can be created using either man or animal essence, and the souls of the long dead and of the recently deceased are both accessible, though with varying degrees of potency.
The creation of blood stones remains, however, strictly prohibited by the Acheron Order.
The sun had crept up from the horizon by the time Vic left Sarah’s apartment. They’d stayed up late, arguing about the future, until May slipped out to return to her own bed and Sarah fell asleep on the couch.
Vic stayed awake. Her skin felt cold and weak from the lack of sleep, and she couldn’t force her thoughts to clear.
Aren Mann had set an Orcan loose in the castle, Vic had survived a test designed to kill her, and a woman had been eviscerated by a strix.
It was too much for her to ponder on a full day without sleep.
But everything caught up with her as she wandered through the empty morning halls.
Vic hadn’t known the murdered woman, Rachel, though she had seen her shrouded figure every day in the back of the lecture hall.
But Vic felt a deep hollow when she realized that a person had stopped existing.
Vic would go back to the lecture hall in the next few days, and class would plod along as it always did, and an entire human being had left the world behind.
Rachel probably had a family, people who loved her, going through horrible pain.
Vic knew she would never forget the sight of the dead woman on the library floor.
Brown eyes clouded over and staring into a world Vic couldn’t see.
She couldn’t let the rest of the night overshadow that image, though it threatened to.
The rough glow of the catacomb walls, the cruel look on Nathaniel’s face. The pain when the shackles clamped shut.
Aren Mann wanted to kill Mades, though he’d become one himself in a bid for power.
He would do anything to gain it, including place his life on the line.
A gamble, he’d called it. But as she walked alone, Vic could understand his motivations.
She would do the same, wouldn’t she? If she could guarantee the outcome.
If not for power, then for purpose, Vic would take the plunge. She remembered the shock and horror on the faces of the Order after she emerged from the Rite not triumphant but not beaten either. And she wished they hadn’t looked so hateful. It would be nice, wouldn’t it, to fit in?
She had fallen in over her head, but she still felt she could learn how to swim.
Vic could get what she wanted out of this place, if she tried hard enough.
If she fought with everything she had, she could gain some semblance of a role in a world that wanted nothing to do with her.
Vic could prove her mother wrong—she could prove herself worthy of the love Meredith always denied her.
Light too sickly to be called sunlight snuck through the windows at an angle and cast the world in strange proportions. Small things threw large shadows as the castle contorted itself in the early morning, and Vic walked as fast as she could without running.
The strix was still loose, after all. Though Sarah was confident it had left the castle, the creature had not been found.
On the landing of the staircase leading to her and Henry’s floor, Vic sensed movement above her.
Her head jolted upward.
Her heart sped up, and the muscles in her arms and legs readied to run.
Most of the landing lay concealed in shadow, and Vic stared into the spiral of the stairs overhead, waiting for the darkness to shift.
After a long pause, Vic shook her thoughts away and continued on. Her fear was making her see things that weren’t there.
Vic hurried down another flight of stairs and into the corridor housing her apartment.
There were no windows in that stretch of hallway, and darkness obscured the final part of her path.
With a deep breath, Vic reminded herself that she was a grown woman who was not, as a matter of fact, afraid of the dark, and she plunged toward the door.
By the time her hand grasped the doorknob, Vic’s pulse pounded in her ears, reminding her that she might be, slightly, afraid of the dark. She fumbled through unlocking the door and pulled the key from the lock.
As she twisted the knob, Vic felt something brush across her neck.
It was faint. It might have been nothing at all.
But goosebumps rippled across her flesh. She had felt something. A brush of wind in a draftless hallway. Someone breathing on her neck.
Almost against her will, Vic turned to face behind her.
Her key fell to the floor with a clatter.
A figure coalesced in the precise spot Vic had left a moment before.
It had form and no form at the same time, as if it had a center of mass but no edges.
Nothing but darkness, shifting into and out of a monstrous, shapeless thing.
It was much larger than a man and seemed to fill the space as it moved away from her.
As if the creature noticed Vic’s gaze on its back, it stopped.
It turned without turning.
It had no eyes, no face, no shape at all. But Vic knew, with horrifying certainty, that it was looking at her.
Her breath caught in her throat.
For an endless moment, they stared at each other.
She couldn’t tell what it was thinking. If it was thinking.
Her chest rose and fell as the creature watched her.
Vic had seen the laetite, and she had seen the shadowed thing, this shadowed thing, at a great distance.
But watching it up close was uncanny. She was in another world.
One constructed in the corners of the world she knew, its passageways and turrets built along the fringes while no one noticed.
Knowing that such a thing could exist, in some abstract way, could never compare to seeing it firsthand.
Magic must be addictive, Vic realized. To stare at the bare face of another reality was invigorating.
Vic could only imagine how thrilling it must be to master it.
As she stared, the creature shifted. The shadows that had formed its body a moment prior settled back into their natural places as darkness sped away from her.
Vic wanted to shout at it to come back. She had no idea why.
She remembered being a child and hearing an Orcan around the corner, moments before Meredith had ripped Vic from her frightened trance. Vic remembered standing immobilized as the sound grew closer, and she had spent two decades wondering what made that noise.
Vic sprinted after the creature.
She bolted into the stairwell in the wake of the formless dark.
The thing was fast. Vic almost lost her footing on the stairs, but she stumbled to a stand and caught a hint of a shadow turning the corner in front of her.
If she lost it, even for a second, she knew there was no getting it back.
She darted after it, though she had no idea what she would do if she caught up.
Her pursuit led her down one endless hall and into another, until she saw a touch of darkness streaking toward the front entrance.
She tore after it and skidded to a stop in the dining hall.
Vic had been here many times, every evening for a quiet dinner with Sarah.
The other witches typically avoided Vic, and she ate quickly.
But in the early morning it was stone-cold and quiet.
She scanned for the creature, looking for any movement in the dark corners of the room and the long shadows cast by empty tables and chairs.
She was breathing hard as she stared around the space—far too large for a castle so poorly inhabited. Without thinking, Vic pulled the knife from her back and unsheathed it. Its leather holster fell to the floor as Vic spun, knife in hand, looking for a living shadow.
First, she felt the air move. Barely a breath, but she felt it ruffle her hair.
Then, she heard it.
A whoosh as enormous wings cleaved the air, and Vic hit the ground on instinct.
She twisted onto her back and stared up as the shadow loomed over her, blocking out the light.
But it wasn’t the shadow this time.
It was the broad, open wings of the strix.
Vic rolled away as the massive beast reached toward her with talons as long as her hand. She couldn’t think about anything other than those talons, which Vic knew could tear her skin as easily as paper.
The strix couldn’t fly close to the ground. Chairs and tables littered the space. The creature flew back to hover about a dozen feet overhead, and the movement of its wings sent her curls dancing around her face.
Vic’s heart hammered as she army-crawled toward the closest table.
She still had the knife in her fist. Vic crouched under a heavy wooden table and prepared herself to strike.
But she realized that she’d lost sight of the creature, and she couldn’t feel the wind from its flight anymore. A horrible sinking feeling hit her right before she realized where it was.
The strix tore the table away from above Vic with a clawed foot, flinging it across the room, where it shattered against the wall.
“Get down!” someone shouted behind Vic.
Vic ducked.
And just in time.
Vic felt something streak over her hair and land, with a thunk, in the strix’s chest. A volucrine shriek filled the hall as the creature bellowed in pain, the wood-handled end of a knife jutting from its torso.
But it wasn’t dead yet, and now it was angry.