Chapter Eighteen
S
omeone was talking. It sounded a lot like my voice, but I knew I wasn’t talking. Which meant I was probably dreaming.
Strange, since I didn’t remember falling asleep.
“He was supposed to keep her until we opened the gate for you, but he failed in doing so,” I was saying.
“The disk is draining too quickly,” a man’s voice I did not recognize said. “How much longer do I have, Daniel?”
“I do not know. It has been through death. It is charged with both light and dark magic, but I have never tried to support a body and soul with this technology. If you are to remain here, you will need to find a living body to possess.”
“A body with your disk implanted in it?”
“We won’t have time to find the disks before the one you hold is empty.”
“You could use me,” another man with a Scottish accent said. “Implant the disk in me; then take my body.”
“No, Roman, you have done enough,” the other man said. “And there is no time.”
“I can endure.”
“Even so,” I was saying, “he will need a body with a disk to hold magic within it and tie the soul to the flesh. You are too alive, too human.”
“Find my solution, Daniel Beckstrom, or our agreement will be terminated.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
“Shamus Flynn,” I said.
There was a pause. “He is Hugh and Maeve’s son,” I said.
“Where?”
“There.”
Another pause, then the sound of heavy footsteps.
“He has grown into a man,” he said with a touch of melancholy. “Has it been that many years since I was alive?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then it has been too long for her to be in this world, destroying magic, destroying lives. Wake him.”
I heard someone walking.
“How long will his body support me?” the man asked.
“An hour, a few minutes. I do not know,” I said. “He has a strong will, high pain tolerance, and an untested Soul Complement.”
I heard a sigh. “There have been too many Soul Complements in recent years,” the man said. “I have seen their deaths. I have spoken to their spirits. None have found peace.”
“It plays to our hand now, though,” I said. “Soul Complements have always been drawn to Portland. Four wells so close together seems destined to bring Complements together.”
“Wake up, Shamus,” the Scottish voice said. “No, you’re still under our Hold spell, so there’s no need to waste your energy fighting it. Mikhail needs a word with you.”
“What? What do you want?” That, I knew, was Shame. His voice was raw, strained, as if he were working hard to get each word out.
“Your body,” the man said. “Your mind. You will give them over to me.”
“Fuck off.”
“Willingly or unwillingly,” the man said, “I will take your flesh as my own.”
“Bullshit. Allie? Are you in there?”
The sound of my name drew me out of my half-conscious awareness, up into my mind, my body. I snapped into place and opened my eyes.
No, my eyes were already open. I was standing next to Mikhail, who seemed to take up all the space in the room. He was taller than me, wide shouldered, his hair short and black, his eyes an arctic blue, deep and sorrowful in skin that was so white, it was leaning toward pasty green. I did not know how he was alive, how he had walked out of death in the body he had died in.
He was staring at Shame, who sat on the couch. Terric and Zayvion, who both appeared to be sleeping, were slumped at either side of him.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Fucker wants to possess me.”
Dad was standing with me in my mind. I think, if he had wanted to, he could have kept me down, unconscious, or semiconscious, thinking this was all a dream.
Yes
, he said,
I could have.
I tried to pull on magic, to throw it at Mikhail. But it was like a heavy blanket draped around me, making it impossible to draw on magic, making it hard to think, much less remember a spell.
“This will take a sacrifice,” Dad said through me. I pushed at him but couldn’t make him move away.
Crap.
“I understand,” Mikhail said. “Do you understand, Shamus Flynn? To carry me, a price must be paid.”
Roman was shaking Terric awake. No, oh hells, no. They weren’t going to sacrifice Terric for Mikhail’s plans.
Even though I was in the front of my mind, I could not make my body move.
“Get your hands off of him,” I said as he shook Zay awake.
Zay’s eyes rolled in his head; then he blinked several times, as if struggling free of sedation. Terric looked the same.
Shame obviously couldn’t move. He didn’t look terrified as Grimshaw stepped away from the couch and watched them dispassionately. He just looked furious.
“There are many things that you must know,” Dad said through me. “And we have little time to explain it. Allison was correct. Mikhail found a way to heal magic, to bring light and dark magic together again. But in so doing, he caught the attention of Leander and Isabelle. In that one moment when magic was rejoined, Leander and Isabelle opened a gate into life. And Isabelle stepped through.”
“When?” Zay asked.
“Many years ago. She struck swiftly. Possessed quickly. And has been in this world ever since.”
“Who did she possess?” Zay asked.
Dad opened my mouth to answer, but it was Mikhail who spoke.
“Sedra. She tore my beloved’s soul in half and burrowed into her. All these years she has held Sedra trapped. Neither alive nor dead. While Isabelle uses her body and her power.”
“Yes,” Dad said softly. “Sedra.”
Zay’s expression went from shock to horror to anger. He had sworn to follow Sedra’s orders, to treat her word as law in the Authority’s business. How many people must he have Closed at her command? How many must he have killed?
It was not Sedra who had been running the Authority. It was Isabelle—the woman who had been dead for hundreds of years. The woman who, along with her Soul Complement, Leander, had gone insane and killed her way across the world before the Authority broke magic to break them.
When Zay looked at me, his eyes were wide, shocky. “Is this true? Allie, can you tell if he’s telling the truth?”
I nodded. Well, what did you know? Dad was letting me have a little control. “It’s true. Dad thinks it’s true.”
Shame, for perhaps the first time, was so angry, he was completely silent.
“Mikhail can find her,” Dad said. “He carries a small piece of her soul within him.”
“Then find her,” Zay said.
“It is not so easy, guardian of the gate,” Mikhail said. “This disk is nearly empty, and it is all that is keeping my body alive. I will die in this world without a body to possess. My soul will return to death, and Isabelle will go free.”
“I will carry you,” Zay said without hesitation.
Roman made a sound of appreciation. “The old training is still strong.”
“You cannot hold him,” Dad said through me. “He needs a body between life and death. One with a disk to support and connect his soul to flesh. Only magic and technology can make that happen.”
“You possess Allie without a disk,” Terric said, his voice rough, as if he were bearing a heavy load or heavy pain.
“Yes. We are father and daughter, blood of blood. It is a rare but perhaps a more organic possession. There is no blood relative who can support Mikhail here.”
“Then who?” Terric asked.
“Me,” Shame said. “And you’re sure as hell not getting my body unless I get something out of it in exchange.”
“You are in no position to negotiate, Hugh’s son,” Mikhail said. “What is your price?”
“That you fix what I did to Terric.”
“Shame,” Terric breathed.
“Shut up,” Shame said. “If you can put light and dark magic back together, then you can put him back together. Heal the scars I left on him when I tried to kill him. Make it so he can use Death and Blood magic again.”
“Do you think I want that?” Terric asked. “Don’t do this, Shame.”
Mikhail looked at Terric and cast a Sight spell much like the one I’d seen Dr. Fisher use. He peered at it for a long moment, then canceled the spell and slowly shook his head. “I am not a healer, Shamus Flynn. That destiny belongs to a soul much less dark than I. I cannot heal him, though I may be able to ease the pain of his wounds.”
“You’ll take away as much damage as you can.”
“Are you sure you understand what you ask of me? That I will do what is within my power to make it easier for Terric to use Blood and Death magic?”
“Yes.”
“Then yes.”
“No,” Terric and I said at the same time.
“Shame,” I said, “you don’t have to do this. Don’t have to let him possess you. There could be another vessel. Stone held Zay. Maybe we could get Stone to do it.”
“There is no time.” Mikhail opened his hand. I am no expert on the disks, but the disk in his hand was ashy gray and crumbling at the edges, as if simply being in contact with Mikhail’s flesh aged and eroded it.
“Shame,” Terric said. “Do not do this.”
Shame looked over at him, gave him that self-mocking smile. “Tell me you don’t want to be healed.”
“I don’t want to be healed.” Flat. Clear. He meant it.
“Too bad.” He nodded at Mikhail. “Do it.”
“Wait,” I said. Mikhail did not wait. He walked over to Shame. The weight of his footsteps vibrated through the floor as if he were eight feet tall. He was a big man, but he wasn’t a giant. No, each footstep instead seemed heavy from years of his body and soul existing in death, years he spent gathering to him the magic he would need to reenter our world, body and all.
“You said there was a price to pay,” I said. “What price? Who’s paying it?” I tried to move my hand, to think my way through a Hold spell, a Shield spell, but the heavy blanket of stupid was still draped around my mind, dampening my ability to use magic.
“A life for a life,” Roman intoned.
“A death for a life,” Mikhail said, staring into Shame’s eyes, while Shame glared right back at him. “Every moment I live will draw you closer to death. That is the price you will pay.”
What does he mean?
I asked Dad.
How is Shame going to pay that?
“Hush,” Dad said.
Oh, no. He had not just hushed me with my own mouth.
“Drop the Hold, Grimshaw,” Shame said. “Damned if I’ll do this sitting down.”
“Mikhail?” Roman asked.
He nodded.
Roman wiped his hand in a half circle and canceled the spell. Or at least enough of it that Shame could move.
Shame took a deep breath and stood.
“Don’t,” Terric said.
“Easiest way to take care of everything,” Shame said. “He finds Isabelle, he finds Sedra. I figure Leander will be near Isabelle, right? We deal with them, we solve Mum and Victor’s problems. We end this bloody mess now. Painful, but simple. Just the way I like it.”
Mikhail placed his hand with the disk in the center of Shame’s chest, over the crystal embedded there. “How long will the crystal support me?” he asked Dad.
I, or rather, Dad, answered. “I do not know. This has never been tested. I am unclear how I would possibly re-create this in a lab setting.”
“Will I have hours, days?”
“Perhaps an hour. Perhaps a day. Perhaps no more than five minutes. I dislike guessing when I have no hard evidence.” There was more he wasn’t saying. I could hear it in his thoughts. There was a very good chance this wouldn’t work at all. That it would not only kill Mikhail, but also kill Shame.
“We will need to move quickly,” Mikhail said.
“Yes,” Dad agreed. “The less time you spend in Mr. Flynn’s body, the better for you both.”
“I will touch your mind,” Mikhail said.
“Don’t fuck this up,” Shame said.
Mikhail raised one eyebrow. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes.”
No
, I thought to Dad.
Don’t let him. Please, Dad, don’t let him kill Shame.
He ignored me.
Mikhail intoned a chant. Dark, the words were made of hard sounds and cutting edges. It made my ears and my head hurt.
He reached out and placed his fingertips in a circle in the center of Shame’s forehead.
Shame’s entire body tensed, his back arching, his eyes going wide, his mouth opening in a silent scream.
He did not scream, but Terric yelled out in pain.
“Stop,” I yelled. “Mikhail, you’ll kill him!”
But Mikhail did not stop. He chanted, short, slippery words that made me think of graves and darkness.
“Let him go!” Terric yelled. “Stop. God, please stop.”
“Death for life,” Mikail said. “Until my revenge is done.” The disk in his hand pressed against the crystal in Shame’s chest and smoked.
Shame rocked up on his toes and arched his back even farther, his arms thrown behind him as if hooks dug deep into his ribs and threatened to pull him off his feet. He inhaled, the smoke from the disk streaming up into his mouth, his nose, his eyes.
Mikhail’s knees gave way, and he slumped forward.
Roman was there, catching him and lowering him to the floor.
Shame collapsed. He fell back onto the couch in a heap. The Hold spell must have broken, because Terric and Zay were both moving again. Terric moved aside and knelt by the couch so Shame could lie down.
“Zay?” Terric looked up, lost, frightened. I think he was going into shock. How much of Shame’s pain had he also endured? How much did he still feel?
Zay was already on his feet, drawing a spell, striding to Roman, who surged up to stand guard above Mikhail’s body, Impact drawn in warning but not yet filled with magic.
Before Zay or Roman could cast, Shame opened his eyes. He pushed away from Terric and stood.
“Enough. Both of you,” he commanded.
Only that was not Shame. That was Mikhail.
Chapter Nineteen
C
hills washed over my skin. It was creepy to see Shame take on Mikhail’s body language. He stood with his shoulders too square and moved with an uncomfortable stiffness, somehow looking larger and taller than he was.
Darkness radiated from him. Death radiated from him. And the crystal burned bloodred through his T-shirt.
Terric stood, the look of horror quickly replaced by the blank expression I’d seen Zay use so often.
“Mikhail,” Terric said calmly. “If you hurt him, even death won’t stop me from destroying you.”
Mikhail-Shame smiled, and it was a cold, strange thing to see on Shame. “Soul of his soul, if you are strong enough, he will survive this. You share his price. If you falter, so shall he.”
He turned to Roman. “Open the gate.”
“To where?” Zay asked.
“Isabelle,” Mikhail-Shame said.
“Where is she?” Zay had not let go of the spell in his hand. Neither had Roman. They both looked like they wanted an old-fashioned glyphs-at-thirty-paces duel.
“She is near the well of Life,” Mikhail said. “What began in death will end in life.”
“Multnomah Falls?” I asked.
No one answered. Terric walked up and stood shoulder to shoulder with Zayvion, glaring at Roman.
“Roman,” Mikhail-Shame said, “there is no time.”
Roman, still standing in protection over Mikhail’s body, dropped the spell he had been holding and turned his back on both Zay and Terric.
That took guts.
Terric knelt and placed his hand on Mikhail’s body.
I glanced down and was shocked at how decomposed his body was. Nothing but flesh hanging in stringy lumps from bones. I looked away and put my hand over my mouth and nose to block the smell. I doubted there would be a pulse there for Terric to find but was glad he checked. All we needed was reanimated flesh to deal with.
Roman was already going through the tai chi motions of opening a gate.
Terric stood, caught my look, and shook his head.
Mikhail-Shame looked down at his dead body. There was no expression, no emotion, as he raised his hand, chanted, and pulled enough magic from the networks supplying my dad’s condo that the lights dimmed. He held both hands out toward the body on the floor.
Magic poured out like black water toward the body. Even without holding Sight, I could see the spell wrap the body, obscuring every detail of what had once been Mikhail, devouring flesh and bone alike.
And then the body was gone. Consumed by the spell he’d just cast.
Holy shit.
Terric looked a little startled by that too and took a step away from where the body had been. The magic was gone, leaving behind nothing but ash.
What the hell kind of spell had that been?
An old, forbidden dark spell
, Dad provided absently, like he was giving me the tour of a museum, instead of explaining what kind of magic could eat a person’s body down to dust.
“Holy shit,” I whispered.
Terric shot a look at Mikhail-Shame, but he had turned to watch Roman open the gate.
Zayvion glanced at me. “Are you okay?”
I nodded and pushed my hair back behind my ears, my hands cold and shaking. Dad was still in my head, still next to me, but he was not trying to take control. I was more me than him right now. And I planned to keep it that way.
Zay kept an eye on Roman and Mikhail-Shame, a spell caught in each of his hands.
Mikhail-Shame didn’t seem the least bit interested in the smudge of ashes he’d left on the floor where his body had been. He didn’t even look at anything but the gate. Terric couldn’t seem to take his eyes off Mikhail-Shame. I could tell Terric was hurting. His breathing was already labored, as if he were running a marathon. Sharing in the price Shame was paying. Sharing in the pain, the death.
I didn’t know how long they could survive this.
Dad shifted in my mind.
It was their risk to take. Shamus took it willingly.
Yeah, well, there hadn’t been a lot of other options. I didn’t think Mikhail was going to take no for an answer.
And I couldn’t help but wonder what Dad’s angle was in all this. He had seemed almost excited for Mikhail to possess Shame. Why?
Roman finished the spell, and the smell of sand and salt filled the room. A speck of black hovered in the air and then spread and opened like shutters, revealing the lush green of the forest beyond the gate. It was a forest. I didn’t know if it was near Multnomah Falls.
Zay nodded and let go of the spells he held in check. When he turned to look at me, I could tell he was impressed at what Roman had done. Then his gaze shifted to Mikhail-Shame. “You first,” he said.
Mikhail-Shame strode through the gate without hesitation.
Terric followed as if dragged by a short leash.
“Now you, Allie,” Zay said.
“Are you coming?”
“I’ll stay to Close the gate.”
“I’ll Close it.” Roman said.
“The police are coming,” Zay said. “Do you really want to be here when they arrive?”
“I won’t be here.”
“If you run,” Zay said, “I will find you.”
“You’d try. Go.” He started tracing a new spell. Sweat glossed his face. He might be good—very good—but he was paying for the magic he had been throwing around, and fatigue showed in his motions.
Zayvion held his hand out for me. “Ready?”
I took his hand. I so didn’t want to do this. The last time I’d stepped through a gate, it had nearly killed me. At least this time, Zay was right there beside me, instead of caught half between a coma and a gargoyle. “Always.”
We held tight and stepped through the gate together.
For a second, for a single heartbeat, I couldn’t breathe. Vertigo made the world slide sideways; light, shape, and distance rushed past me so fast, I sucked in a hard breath—
—just as my foot landed on solid ground.
I stood there, panting. My legs felt like noodles. Crossing through the gate was exhausting.
Not only was it difficult to open a gate exactly where you intended it to open, but it was also exhausting to use. I now understood why it had never taken off as a form of commercial transportation.
Zay tugged on my arm, and I stepped a little farther away from the gate. We were on a trail with trees around us. From the sound and cool wash of water, we were not far from the falls.
Roman had done a hell of a job opening the gate right here on the trail but out of sight of the parking lot and gift shop below. “Wow,” I said quietly.
Zay nodded. “Very.”
Mikhail-Shame and Terric were just a short distance up the trail, waiting for us. There was no one else on the trail, no one I could see at all. It was raining, just a slight sprinkle, and evening was coming on. Both factors may be working in our favor to keep the tourists and locals away.
I took a step and stopped.
Zay hadn’t moved. He was watching the gate. Waiting, I knew, for it to Close, as Roman had said it would.
The gate wavered from the center outward, like a pool rippling beneath a dropped stone. Once the final ripple hit the outside edge, the entire thing began to contract.
And just before it fell completely in on itself, Roman shouldered through, landing in a crouch on the trail behind us, one hand on the ground, the other working the last lines of a glyph.
He looked a little singed, and milky ash clung to the shoulders and sleeves of his coat. He straightened and took in his surroundings. “What are we waiting for?”
He exchanged a look with Zay, then patted his sleeves, sending ash into the wet air. Zay, I could tell, was impressed as hell, but he didn’t let it show.
“Is Isabelle here?” Zay asked Mikhail-Shame.
Mikhail-Shame nodded toward the falls. “She is at the well.” He took a deep breath, maybe scenting her. Maybe the undead could sense the undead better than the living.
“Leander is with her,” he said.
Oh, hell. I could feel my father’s fear slide through my mind before he squelched it.
“We should call for backup,” I said. “Victor or Maeve, or how about everybody?”
Mikhail-Shame looked at me, his strange black eyes burning, his smile a rigor of hatred. I didn’t know how I missed it before, but I was pretty sure Mikhail was not sane.
“Were we to call any other magic user here, they would not arrive in time to help in any manner. This will be done now. At my hand. You will follow me, or you will leave, empty of these memories.”
Roman took a step forward, and Zay stepped in front of me.
“Touch her, you’re dead,” Zay said.
Not helping.
I stood next to Zay. “So we walk in there, open a gate to death, and just expect Isabelle to take your hand and walk back into death with you? I’d like a little more of a plan before I risk my life.”
Again
, I thought.
“Your daughter questions too much,” Mikhail-Shame said.
And Dad answered. Using my mouth. “One of her less endearing traits from her mother.” I forced my mouth closed.
So not funny
, I thought.
“We will enter the chamber that surrounds the well of Life,” Mikhail-Shame said, already walking. “We will find Isabelle and Leander. I do not know why they seek the well, but they will not be expecting our arrival.”
“Don’t you think they’d notice the gate we just stepped through?” I asked.
“They care little for such things. They seek a single goal—to once again be one, and rule magic, all magic for all time.”
Still didn’t answer my question. I tried again.
“Why shouldn’t we wait for backup before we go in there?”
“Because,” he said, “there is no greater strength in this world than the seven of us gathered.”
I had to do a quick head count. There were only five people standing here. Wait—add in the two possessors, and it came to seven.
But we were all injured. Terric looked dazed, following Mikhail-Shame almost blindly. The cut on Zay’s face had swollen so that his eye was almost closed. Mikhail-Shame stood there smiling at me like some kind of undead Greek god come down from Olympus, but pain showed in the gloss of sweat over his face and the fever-bright burn in his eyes. He was burning up, burning out, trying to support Mikhail’s dark soul. Even the glow from the crystal in his chest seemed dimmer.
Roman was still steaming a little from his travel through the gate, and even though he was trying to hide it, I could smell the pain radiating off him. I didn’t know how much the Shackle hurt or hindered him, but I could tell he was not at his best.
I felt like crap on a cracker. The price for throwing so much magic around was starting to catch up to me. I had a neck ache and a shoulder ache, and I felt like someone had gone after my back with a baseball bat.
Even my teeth hurt.
“If we are the greatest strength,” I said, “we’re screwed. We need backup.”
He blinked as if he had not expected me to challenge his assumptions. Then frowned. “You should not underestimate the power and abilities of Soul Complements. I have spent my life . . . and my death . . . studying the power Soul Complements can achieve. Even magic bows to their rule.”
That was what I was worried about. Leander and Isabelle were Soul Complements. More than willing to break magic and make magic kill us.
Terric grunted as if he’d been kicked in the chest.
Mikhail-Shame pressed his palm over the crystal, which dimmed even more, and closed his eyes for a second, swallowing. For a moment, he looked like Shame, just Shame. And he looked like he hurt.
“Ter?” he said softly.
Then he opened his eyes, and he was all Mikhail. The crystal burned a deep ruby again. “We don’t have much time.” He strode off, but not before I saw the blood that coated his palm.