Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Torres let out a roar that rattled the entire building.
I covered my ears and watched as the cops swung their weapons between the demon crawling towards them, bat wings dragging behind its lizard-like body, and the honest-to-god dragon above them.
Torres’s reptilian eyes narrowed, the slit of pupil blown wide as it adapted to the darkness of the warehouse.
Then she was grabbing at something near her claw.
Hidden in the roof beam’s shadows, there were dozens of demons.
Each was the size of a large dog, and I imagined if you got close, they could easily disembowel you.
Nick’s eyes darted around the ceiling, searching out all of the bat-winged creatures.
Torres ripped off the head of the one she’d captured, tossed the corpse aside, and then glided down into the warehouse.
The space limited her, but she didn’t need to fly far, aiming straight for Woolworth in the center of his glowing circles.
With a scream, she glanced off a shining barrier.
The circles created a dome above him, protecting him from anything dropping down.
Smart if you’d released a nest of demons in your warehouse.
“Why are they moving?” I called to Nick.
“What?”
“The circles. Why are they moving?” I gestured to the spinning circles surrounding Woolworth. With my other hand, I reached in my bag and pulled out leaves from some vines. It might save me from a couple of the demons, but after my experience at Tim’s, it wouldn’t last for long.
“It’s a timing thing.” Nick pointed at the first two layers of circle. “He’s got three spells running on his first circle. The only way that’s possible is if they’re moving. Otherwise you can only run one at a time.”
“Wait, so, if the spells were frozen, we could get to him?”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “But even if you iced the floor, the spells would still move.”
“But if time stopped,” I said. “Would they stop?”
Narrowing his eyes, Nick considered my question. “Maybe? How is time going to stop, Parker?”
Before I could answer, fully shifted werewolves burst through the warehouse door, their muzzles wet with blood.
I hoped it was from zombies, and not the SWAT team members we’d left outside.
A familiar form bounded past me, snatching a demon out of the air as it dropped from the ceiling, its eyes on me and Nick.
Grunting, Nick raised his gun and fired at the demons, even as the wolves engaged them. I saw Thistle on the far side of the circle, his mouth moving as he darted around one of the demons. Its neck bent backwards and then he snapped a foot up, crushing its throat.
He was too far away. There was never enough time.
“Nick,” I yelled.
Backing towards me, he glanced over, and whatever he saw on my face, his own expression darkened. “Parker—”
“Just, keep an eye out for me.” I closed my eyes and reached past all the noise and spells and magic flying around. I reached past the wrongness of the demons in our realm and the call of the Far Realm I sensed in the center of the circle.
In the background, there were the constants: the spinning of the earth, the movement of the heavens, the walls between realms, and time.
“Hey,” I murmured. “Hello.”
Nothing responded, but what interest did time have with me?
I nudged it slightly. A gentle push of magic got its attention.
I felt the momentary focus, and I noticed a millisecond of silence, like the world had gone still.
Then time moved on, continuing forward at the fixed pace of seconds, minutes, hours, days.
How did Thistle talk to something so much more massive than he was? How did he convince it to stop?
I shoved more magic at it. The too-full feeling I’d had since draining Woolworth’s barrier magic faded. This time, the pause lasted for almost a full second.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m going to need you to stop.”
Curiosity brushed my mind, and a voice that was more of a deep rumble than anything auditory said, It will cost you.
Reaching into the wellspring of magic I had inside me, I pushed out, giving more magic than I’d ever used at once. Time froze.
I opened my eyes, continuing to feed my magic to time. Nick was looking at the frozen battle around him. “Parker, what did you—”
“No time,” I said. “Let’s move.”
Grabbing his hand, I yanked him with me, nearly tripping in my haste to get to the center of the circle. How did Thistle freeze time easily? Was the entity less greedy if you had more time to talk it into doing what you want?
Nick squeezed my hand and moved beside me, dancing us through the layers of circles, careful to avoid anchor points. He frowned down and looked back at the path we’d carved and then reached into his pocket and pulled out his silver knife.
With a quick slice, he severed one of the circles we were in, and then shoved me forward until we arrived at the inner circle where a frozen Woolworth was reaching down for Acacia at his feet.
Her nut brown skin had turned ashen, nearly blue, and I could see the warm yellow of her magic flowing out of her veins and into Woolworth’s palm. No, I realized, seeing the tendrils of magic were drawn from somewhere else through Acacia. The Summer Queen’s magic flowed into his palm.
No wonder Woolworth had the power to do all this. If he was draining the Summer Queen at the height of her powers, he was tapping into an ocean of magic.
For a little boy, jealous of his powerful, acknowledged cousins, this must have been what he’d wanted his entire life. I pulled Acacia up. She was almost impossible to move, too heavy to even nudge.
She was stuck in time, her body couldn’t move through it like Nick and I could. I was still a fountain of magic, feeding the voracious hunger of time.
“This one,” I said to it. “I need this one, too.”
It will cost you, Time repeated.
“I can pay,” I said.
Instantly, the drain on my magic doubled, but I could lift Acacia. I handed her to Nick. Around us, time flickered back into movement. A half-second here of shifting, another half-second a moment later.
“Go,” I yelled. “If he finishes draining her, we’ll have no hope.”
Frowning, Nick took a stumbling step back, then sprinted for the outer circle.
He got free just as I lost control of time and everything shuddered back into movement.
Placing Acacia on the ground, Nick spun, reaching for the circles, but it was too late, the clockwork movement of Woolworth’s circles was back in place.
I was facing Woolworth, and he growled in unhappiness as he saw Acacia had disappeared. He turned to me, eyes narrowed. He didn’t look like a junior professor anymore. Now he was a man with more power than anyone in the room and more anger than reason.
At his feet, his father moaned, a gag keeping him from speaking and rough rope binding his hands and feet. He’d struggled to a sitting position, but didn’t seem like he was in good enough shape to manage more than that.
“You!” Woolworth yelled. “I should have killed you as soon as I saw you.”
“Too late,” I said. Behind me, I heard a crash like two galaxies colliding and I felt the circles freeze up.
Nick’s little cut had just thrown a rock in the clockwork, and it looked like it was going to get messy.
Woolworth heard it, too, and his eyes widened.
I used his distraction to throw down the leaves I’d pulled out earlier.
I’d crushed them nearly to dust by my poor handling, but I fed them enough magic they sprouted and grew true.
Climbing up Woolworth’s legs, they held him fast as he struggled to see what the damage to his spells was. He made a disgusted sound and waved his hand. It was like watching someone slice open reality.
I’d seen fae make doorways many times, but the way they did it was always clean. Theirs were neat arrangements with reality which pulled the Far Realm closer to Earth. This was brute force without any sort of technique.
Woolworth grabbed the Far Realm and yanked it closer. It was like driving a car through a wall and calling it a doorway. The two worlds screamed. My eyes widened as I heard the dissatisfaction of the Far Realm. Some of that was now my responsibility.
I was the Windrose. Justice and retribution were both in my purview.
“Stop,” I commanded, finding that deep voice again. The tree was there before I even reached for it, a sapling growing fast around me.
Woolworth sneered. “You think you can stop me, fae? I killed the stupid old man who tried to take my power from me. I’ll kill all of you. You’re not even human, and yet you get magic in your bones.”
“Oh, boo hoo,” I said. “Tell it to your therapist. If you wanted power that much, why didn’t you just join a coven?”
As he turned to me, I saw his control flicker, but only a moment. Reality was bending, like a plastic spoon held too close to a flame.
“And dirty myself? No. This is mine. I own this magic. And now I’ll own every drop of magic you’re hiding in the Far Realm.
” He forced his hand through the doorway and I saw him draw the magic into himself.
He wasn’t doing it carefully, the thread on the spindle.
Instead, he was pulling it out with greedy fingers, bloating with it.
The vines withered on his legs, turning to ash he kicked aside with his feet. He snarled and tore open his shirt with his other hand, revealing a large circle on his chest. The pattern was familiar at this point.
“The Kings won’t be able to deny me now.
I’ll be the most powerful alchemist in the world.
My father can’t reject me if I’m more powerful than even Robert King.
” He spit the words at me and I narrowed my eyes, watching for any weakness.
I had to keep him from doing something dangerous before Nick’s slice in the circles paid off.
“You know they won’t.” I inched close to him. His father’s eyes widened. “You think witches are dirty? You’re filthy. You only have other people’s magic now. Even witches don’t steal their magic.”
“Shut up!” he yelled, pulling his hand out of the Far Realm to throw a blast of pure magic at me. Dodging it, I rolled and came up next to my oak tree.
There was something wrong with the tree. Normally it seeped with power, imbuing me with abilities and strength I hadn’t had a few days ago. Now, though, it was like a washed-out projection of a tree, a ghost of itself.
I could see Nick out of the corner of my eye, trying to get into the circle, yelling something I couldn’t hear over the noise of the battle. I glanced between Mark and the doorway he’d created. Whatever was wrong with the tree had to do with that.
There was too much power sloshing around in Mark right now. No matter how much he stretched, he couldn’t take much more. It reminded me of the iron from his house. He’d stuffed himself with gunpowder. The right match might set him off.
While I was distracted by trying to figure out what to do with Mark, he’d pulled more magic and slapped a hand down on a circle I hadn’t noticed. It powered up, Mark’s magic a sickly red, and then I was dodging electricity.
A bright lightning bolt hit the tree, and it groaned, shaking the building.
I let the tree go, and it faded, disappearing into a whisper of reflected light.
The crackling of electricity reminded me of what Zahide and Nick had both said when I’d explained how I’d sapped the energy from the circle at Mark’s house.
Taking magic from a contained circle was dangerous.
Explosive, even.
I just had to get him to touch a circle. He was laughing as I dodged around the lightning, limited by the circles he’d drawn to keep everyone out.
“Awww,” I said. “This is fun. I can’t wait until you meet a real alchemist, though.”
“What do you mean?” he said.
“You don’t even recognize him?” I gestured towards Nick. “He’s your cousin, and this mess of circles doesn’t even faze him. He’s only waiting because we have a bet that I can take you out without getting a scratch.”
Angrily, Mark slapped his hand down on the circle again, ready to push more power into it. I pulled tight on the obligation between us.
It was weak. Barely more than a thread. It had nothing on the chains that had tied me to the Summer Queen.
Still, I had more power now than I’d ever had. I could make it work.
“Drink,” I commanded.
The circle on his chest predisposed him to it, his other hand drifting close to the doorway to the Far Realm, but my command pushed him into touching the lightning circle. It was like nudging someone who was already bent over. They were going to fall, anyway.
The spell he’d drawn on his skin brightened at the command, and then Mark was drinking back the magic in the lightning circle. But the spell on his chest was greedy, and it pulled at the magic from the larger circles Mark had drawn.
At the influx of magic, he screamed. The circle on his chest lit up white, and I saw it smoke, branding itself into his skin.
As he drew magic from the larger circles, Nick’s slice exploded, shattering the spell.
Magic shot out, most of it disappearing into the ground, but some of it slamming back into Mark.
He made an inhuman sound and his whole body expanded outwards. For a moment, I was afraid he would actually explode and leave everyone covered in blood and viscera.
Instead, the magic he contained detonated and released like an atomic bomb.
It threw everyone back, even Torres and the demon.
Everyone slammed against the walls of the warehouse, colliding with the shelving and pallets Mark had pushed back.
Theo King slid away as well, and Nick tried to catch him before he could get hurt, but missed him by a few feet.
I stayed in the inner circle by throwing myself down flat, avoiding the brunt of the explosion. After the wave had passed, I looked up.
Mark was on his back, chest smoking. His eyes were bleeding, and he blinked them rapidly, moaning. Not bleeding, I noted, bloody. The backfiring magic had burned out his eyes, and all it left was two holes in his face.
My eyes caught on a rainbow of light. Worse, the discharge of magic had left the doorway to the Far Realm open. In fact, as I looked, the opening grew and someone walked through.