Chapter 21
A disturbanceoutside the office had everyone tensing and drawing on their magic. Jared snatched the switchblade from his ankle strap and unleashed his divine sword.
The door clattered open ahead of a noisy group of witches.
Bryony blinked before sagging at the sight, relief rendering her weak. She must have called them!
“Hey, beauty before age!” Regina Nox snapped at Ludmila Vissarion as they hustled one another to get inside the room.
Ludmila shook her cane at Regina. “You want to taste my flames, witch?!”
“Nana?!” Roman croaked. He jumped to his feet. “What are you doing here?!”
Ludmila brightened. “Roman.” Her expression fell. “What happened to you, my sweetie pie? You look like you’ve lost weight.” She narrowed her eyes at Nadia. “Has that mean witch been mistreating you?!”
Nadia sighed wearily. “Hello to you too, Ludmila.”
Regina squinted at Roman. “That is never your great grandkid?! Where’d he get his good looks from?” She glanced suspiciously at Ludmila. “’Cause it sure ain’t from your side of the family, hag.”
“Oh God,” Erik Nox muttered somewhere behind them.
Fire Magic erupted on Ludmila’s cane and in her salamander’s eyes. Regina’s jackrabbit bristled at her feet.
“Let’s all calm down,” April Blackwood said soothingly.
The Persian cat in her arms meowed softly.
Barbara Nolan appeared behind Regina. She looked like she was giving serious consideration to walloping the Vegas witch.
“Aunt Barbara.” Violet rushed over and hugged the older woman. She pulled back and scanned her face anxiously. “I didn’t think you’d get here so fast. I,” she faltered, “—I thought she might stop you from coming.”
“She said she couldn’t intervene with more than a warning.” Barbara smiled faintly and patted her niece’s shoulder. “She saw no reason to prevent us from providing assistance to the New York coven, since this involves the fate of the world of magic.”
“Us?” Miles said blankly.
A bevy of Nolans poked their heads around the door.
A man with a gray beard and a friendly parrot on his shoulder greeted them with a dignified expression that was at odds with the jostling happening around him. “Hello.”
“Yo,” a young woman holding a chihuahua said cheerfully over his shoulder.
“By the way, do you guys know about the giant in your garden?” a guy with a frog on his head said warily. “He’s peeing in a flower bed.”
Bryony straightened, scowling. “Don’t tell me it’s my petunias?!”
“It’s your roses, actually.”
Bryony cut her eyes to Abraham.
The aide sighed. “I’ll tell Rambrog off.”
“You gave the giant a name?” Jared said leadenly.
“He told Brimstone that’s what he was called in Hell,” Abraham muttered. “He’s quite sweet actually.”
A couple of figures squeezed past Frog Guy.
“Mom?!” Miles mumbled at the sight of a woman accompanied by an iguana.
“Oh. Hi, Miles.” Miles’s mother dug her elbow into the ribs of her companion, a witch with a ginger cat. “Psst! Check out those Ming vases!”
The witch with the ginger cat sniffed. “Told you she was loaded.”
Frog Guy was studying Nadia with bright-eyed interest.
“Hey, Uncle Floyd?” he said to Parrot Guy out the corner of his mouth. “Do you know that hot chick with the desert fox?”
Nadia narrowed her eyes, Sun Magic glinting dangerously in her pupils.
Barbara met Bryony’s gaze steadily over the heads of the squabbling Regina and Ludmila. “We have a lot of work to do, old friend.”
* * *
Bile burnedthe back of Oscar’s throat as he watched the Sorcerer King absorb the powers of the men and women he’d had his foul troops massacre.
This was ten times worse than the incident in Philadelphia, when Barquiel had raised an army of ghouls to possess the sorcerers and witches they had kidnapped so as to transmute the Book of Light’s grimoire into its true form.
Vedran’s jaws opened to inhuman proportions as he sucked in the black magic he had ripped from the cores of the corpses amassed before him, the bodies adding to the festering piles of the dead that had accumulated in the days they had been trapped in Void. He twitched and jerked, body rigid and expression glazed while the corrupt mist infiltrated his mouth and nose.
Oscar’s gaze dropped to his father’s cloak. He could see the bulge of the compass. He fisted his hands.
This might be my only chance to get it from him. Maybe he won’t find it if I hide it inside one of those bodies!
He hesitated before approaching the Sorcerer King, conscious of the watchful stares of the monstrous army lurking in the shadows.
Black magic washed over him in sickening waves that raised the hairs on his skin. He stopped beside his father. He could smell a stench coming from him.
It evoked old, rotting meat and an evil that could never be purged.
Oscar’s hand trembled as he reached for the artifact that would allow his father to become a God. His fingers brushed the cold metal.
Yes! His heart pounded wildly against his ribs. Almost there!
Freezing fire scorched his wrist in the next instant. He cried out, the smell of seared flesh filling his nostrils while the excruciating pain of the deadly black magic piercing his body almost rendered him unconscious.
Vedran looked down and met his stricken stare as he swayed in his father’s unyielding grip. Terror robbed Oscar of breath.
The Sorcerer King’s eyes were black from edge to edge. A vile magic bubbled in his pupils and enveloped him in an inky aura.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked Oscar icily.
“I—” Oscar’s nails sank into his palms. “It looked like it was going to fall.”
Vedran’s dreadful gaze found the Book of Light where it half tilted out of his pocket. He released Oscar.
Oscar stumbled back and clutched his wrist to his chest, the taste of blood on his tongue from where he’d bitten the inside of his cheek to stop himself from screaming.
“I see.” Not an ounce of pity showed on Vedran’s face when he observed the horrific burns on Oscar’s arm. “Let me fix that.”
Blood pounded in Oscar’s skull. He forced himself to stay still while his father took his arm and cast a healing spell on him, his face a stiff mask that concealed his fear.
He could feel it. No, see it.
The magic trembling around Vedran was testimony to his core being whole once more. But there was more to it than that. He had never sensed this level of power from his father before.
Not only was he stronger, absorbing the cores of the dead had added an even more sinister element to his already sickening magic.
The pain afflicting Oscar faded.
Vedran released him. “Now, let’s see if this thing will finally work.”
The Sorcerer King removed the Book of Light from his cloak and studied it with a zealous expression.
Hellfire Magic burst into life in his father’s palm. Oscar recoiled. The dark red sphere whined and sizzled as it spun rapidly on itself, causing the air around it to ripple with intense heat.
Several hellbeasts growled and pulled back. Even the ghouls and devils seemed nervous in the face of the ominous flames.
Vedran shaped the Hellfire into a key, inserted it inside the compass, and twisted. There was a soft click.
A tremor shook Void.
Oscar startled. His head jerked, his gaze sweeping the infinite darkness surrounding them.
It came again and again, an escalating pulse that made his eardrums throb and shook his bones. Restless grunts and clicks sounded as Vedran’s army retreated farther into the shadows, their pupils bright with fear.
The Sorcerer King never looked away from the Book of Light.
Oscar’s stomach roiled when he realized the waves of power were coming from the compass.
The fabric of space ripped open a couple of inches in front of the artifact. Glee brightened Vedran’s face. A crimson light spilled out of the tear.
Horror drenched Oscar in a cold sweat as it widened, revealing the secret place it had long hidden. The sound of a storm roared through Void.
There, spinning within a tempest of demonic energy, was a black book wreathed in shadows.