Gods of Chaos (Red Magic) (29 page)

I pulled my face away after a minute, startled. “What did you do that for?”

Marcus flexed his hands, as if he wanted to reach for me again. “I’m not sure.”

“Well, don’t.” I glared at him, trying to ignore the churning sensation in my stomach and the way the soles of my feet were tingling from his kiss.

He looked at me for a long moment. “If that’s what you want.”

I realized my arms were still around his back, so I let go. My body swayed for a minute, like a magnet on a string, but I resisted the pull toward Marcus. I leaned back, trying to sound firm. “Yes.”

His eyes hardened, and he stood brusquely. “Are you awake enough to move on?”

Startled by how quickly he dropped it, I looked around at the dark forest. “It’s still night!”

“There’s no time to waste. Besides, I’m afraid your blubbering may have been heard.” His tone was cruel, and I winced.

Seconds ago, he had been trying to comfort my tears. Now he was accusing me of giving away our position to anyone in the woods. My anger rose, canceling the last of the lingering sensations from his kiss. “How dare you? Who died and made you king of the forest?”

His lips parted as if he were about to retort, but I didn’t give him the chance.

“We’re in this thing together, so stop treating me like I’m something lower than you. Just because I haven’t used Red magic as long as you doesn’t mean I’m weak.”

“Are you finished?”

I screamed in frustration and flopped over, wishing I wasn’t acutely aware of his eyes on me. “Yes. And I’m going back to sleep. We’ll move in the morning.”

He didn’t answer and he didn’t lie back down. I heard his footsteps shuffle away, and I tried not to care. I shut my eyes, determined to force myself to fall back asleep, but I kept thinking about the kiss. I tried to think of Justin, but just when I had his face in my mind, the image shifted until I was seeing Marcus. What the hell had happened between us? Why had he kissed me? And worse, why had I liked it?

After tossing fitfully for two hours, I stopped pretending to be asleep. I stood up when the first pink wisps tinged the eastern sky and stretched, looking around the campsite warily. For a minute, I panicked, thinking I was alone, but then I saw him.

He was sitting as far away from the lean-to as he could get, and his head rested heavily on his knees. He looked up as I emerged, and his expression was impossible to read.

My stomach flip-flopped, and I looked away. “Let’s get moving.” I didn’t look in his direction again, but I felt him stand and begin taking down camp. We had a system now, and even though we worked in tense silence, it didn’t take long to clear away any sign we’d been in the woods.

Soon, we were on the road again. Marcus walked ahead of me, snapping off branches that got in his way. He obviously didn’t want to talk, which was fine with me.

As I trudged along in silence, my mind raced down different paths. The idea of nuclear meltdown, my bargain with Loki, Hecate’s hatred, and the velvety feel of Marcus’s lips on mine cycled through my thoughts, leaving me alternately panicked, angry, and ashamed. I couldn’t deal with the kiss right now, so I focused on Marcus’s earlier suggestion. A nuclear meltdown was nothing compared to what had happened last night.

He was right: it was probably the safest way to keep my deal with Loki, but the images from my nightmare haunted me. I did not want to be the person responsible for the ultimate destruction of the earth. I only wanted the ability to bind Hecate because I was trying to prevent her from destroying the planet. I’d be a pretty crappy Witch if I ended up doing exactly what I was trying to stop.

My thoughts raced in circles, and I sighed. The idea was risky, but I couldn’t come up with any alternatives. If we wanted Loki’s help, I needed to make it seem like the world was ending. I wanted to harm as few people as possible, and no other large-scale disasters could be so relatively free from casualty. Despite the logic, something in my gut refused to accept the idea of a massive nuclear meltdown as a solution.

Snow had begun falling while we walked. Thick, misshapen flakes landed in lumps on my arms and hair, and when I looked up at the sky I was almost blinded by snow. It had an eerie kind of prettiness. When we stopped to eat the last of my granola bars, Marcus looked around nervously.

“We have to move faster.”

After so many hours of silence, his curt statement surprised me into speech. “Why?”

“Someone could track us in the snow.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it; the statement was so ludicrous. “Marcus, don’t you think the people who would want to find us would trace something other than our footprints?”

He looked at me, stunned. “I’m such an idiot. All this time we’ve been using magic like we’re safe. It must have been like sending up a thousand signal flares!” Quickly, he stood up, circling around me in a defensive posture. He looked like a wolf, and I was grateful he wasn’t hunting me.

Hesitantly, I placed a hand on his shoulder. We both jerked at the electrical current that snapped between us, but I didn’t pull my hand away. “They haven’t found us yet. We don’t even know if anyone is looking.”

He shook his head. “We have to start assuming they are. We need to move on with the plan now, before it’s too late.”

I paused, trying to find the right words to express my doubts, but he read my expression, and his eyes turned cold.

“You aren’t backing out now?”

I put my hands up defensively. “We haven’t agreed on anything yet.”

He snorted. “Surely you can see that my way would be the best.”

I nodded slowly. “Yes, but I’ve been thinking.” I wavered for a moment, but then inspiration struck. “I think we should try to find Izzy on our own first. The bargain can wait.” That was the one thing I could think of that might make him change his mind. Never mind that if we found Izzy on our own, I doubted Marcus would help me keep my bargain with Loki. I’d worry about that later; right now, I just wanted to make him forget the nuclear disaster idea.

His eyes lit up before he frowned at me. “Before, you made it clear that she wasn’t our top priority.”

“But maybe she can help us!”

Now he glared at me. “Why? Do you want to use her?”

“No! But Marcus, she’s smart, and she’s Blue. She might see a different solution to the problem. She was trying to help me find a way to bind Hecate when she—”

Before I could finish, he was in front of me, his hand against my throat, sending a painful pulse of energy into my neck. “You dragged her into this? It’s because of you that she’s gone?” His mood had changed from cranky to lethal, and I squirmed in fear.

“No! She wanted to help me. We were just researching in the library at her school.”

“What were you researching?” He didn’t let go of my throat, even when I poked him sharply under the ribcage.

“Stories about other gods who’ve been bound. She didn’t know about Loki.”

“What had you found?”

“She was reading a book about Egyptian mythology. When I came back to our seats, she was gone but the book was still there.”

He released me, and I stepped away from him quickly, breathing hard and rubbing my throat.

“How long has it been since you first met Loki?”

I thought back. “I met him for the first time in a dream on Christmas Eve. But he didn’t try to bargain with me until I was in Scotland.”

“And you didn’t like his offer, so you dragged my sister into your search for another way to capture Hecate?”

When he put it that way, I sounded careless and cold. “She wanted to help me. When you disappeared … ” I paused, remembering the visitation from Persephone, when I had first begun to suspect what Hecate ultimately wanted.

“Well?” Marcus stared at me intently, his face a mask.

“Persephone came to us. She told Izzy we probably couldn’t save you. She was the one who told us that Hecate has been trying to set in motion an end to the world.”

He sighed. “And my sister wanted to help you.” He looked at his hands for a moment, and when he met my eyes again, I was surprised to see tears streaming down his face. “Izzy always puts others before herself. She’s the best Witch I’ve ever met.”

“Is that just because she’s Blue?”

He shook his head. “No, I’ve met other Blue Witches. Izzy is special. I guess she was shaped by her patron even more than I was. You know what happened, right?”

“I know your mother promised Izzy to Isis before she was born.” I spoke cautiously, not sure if speaking about his family would send Marcus into another rage.

“Mom died giving birth to Izzy. I was six.” He swallowed, and I mentally recalculated his age. With a shock, I realized that he was only twenty; he seemed way too hardened and worldly to be so close to my own age.

Marcus went on, ignoring my expression. “That’s when Cerridwen took me for training. Isis did the same thing.”

I stared at him, open-mouthed. “But how? And where?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know a lot of the details. But Isis took her when our mother died, and I didn’t see her again until I was fifteen.”

My mind whirred furiously. “So Izzy spent the first nine years of her life in the care of a goddess?”

He nodded. “She’s never told me exactly what happened, but I think she was raised in the Underworld.”

“How would a human child live in the Underworld?”

“From what I understand, the Duat, the Egyptian Underworld, is less like the Greek and more like the Celtic. It’s Underworld and Otherworld combined, so the living can pass there with more fluidity.”

I processed what he was telling me. “There is no one on earth like your sister.”

He nodded. “I’ve known that for years.”

If Izzy had been raised by her patron, then she probably knew as much magic as Marcus did. And from what she’d told me, Blue magic might be able to balance the harm caused by uncontrolled Red magic. “Marcus, we have to find her before we try anything else. We need her,” I pleaded.

“Where do you suggest we look?” His tone was icy, and I drew back, startled.

“I don’t know, okay? But finding her is the key to everything.”

Marcus stalked away from me, his shoulders tense. “Why should I trust you?”

“We both want the same thing,” I coaxed, keeping my distance from him.

He whirled around angrily. “No we don’t! I don’t know what you want, Darlena. One minute, you’re talking about binding Hecate, and the next you’re back on my sister. Which is it, Witch? What matters to you here?”

“I don’t know!” I shouted, feeling helpless. “Stopping Hecate seemed important. I mean, I wouldn’t even be here if not for that! But I can’t bear the idea of—”

“Nuclear meltdown,” Marcus cut me off with a mocking tone. “Because you’re not a Red Witch. You want to practice pink magic like a fluffy little Non and stay safe and sound at home.” He glared at me. “Well, Witch, that’s something you should have thought of before now.”

He was standing so close to me that I could feel the heat of his breath, and even though my lips started tingling in anticipation, I drew my hand back and slapped him across the face.
Gods, that hurt.

Marcus grabbed my wrist as soon as I hit him and started to squeeze. “I’m going to ask you again. What do you want?”

“I don’t want to destroy anything. I know that much.” I clenched my teeth, trying to pull my hand out of his grasp, but it was like it was set in concrete. My arm tingled, but I couldn’t move.

Suddenly, Marcus dropped my arm, and I staggered back. “Too late for that, Red.” He gestured around the forest, and I stared in horror.

Flames encircled us, licking up the dry, winter wood. The ground was pitted and cracked, as if an earthquake had happened, and the only thing I could think of was that it all looked like the scene from a bad apocalyptic movie. Black smoke rose into the air, mingling with the snow until it looked like volcanic ash.

I choked back a sob. “What did you do?”

Marcus shook his head. “I’m not the one who can’t control my magic.”

I wanted to argue with him, but when I looked down at my hands, red sparks were still visible. I dropped to my knees, horrified by what I’d done.