Magic Rising (32 page)

Deirdre opened it, never happier to smell soot and burned wood. It was a fragrant bouquet compared to the hell in the basement. She kept going until she saw stars above where the ceiling had given way to the fire.

Traces of the party had been left behind. The stage was still there, but no dancers or musicians were left. A table sat against the wall, without its dishes or tablecloth. At least she knew she hadn’t imagined it.

But what really happened?
She wasn’t sure and didn’t want to take the time to worry about it now. She had to get away from this place, bathe and remove the stink from her body.

Freedom felt close, so she ran through the last bits of rubble, not worrying about who or what lay ahead only wanting to get back to her car. She made it beyond the last door and the night, fresh and clean, surrounded her.

Deirdre ran down the drive and found her car, parked right where she’d left it. Everyone else had gone, leaving her car alone in the front of the building. Routine made her check the exterior for tampering, but only quickly as she got inside, gunning down the uneven road, and rolling down her window. She didn’t care about the temperature. She needed to feel the wind and know she’d survived Stone House again.

Niam, I killed Niam.
Then a more horrifying truth fell into place.
I killed
.

Everything rushed back and she felt of mix of elation and terror. She’d conquered her worst fears, her demon, but at what price? Murder had always been a sign of becoming greater, a step in the development of power at Stone House, which was part of the reason she feared it. Whatever power she was supposed to gain through a ritualistic slaughter wasn’t worth enduring a moment in that basement. Sure, there were morality issues. Murder was wrong, ending a life for whatever reason unconscionable. Beyond that lay fear though and she wasn’t so hypocritical as to hide the truth from herself. Spilling blood brought change, and she didn’t like that idea.

Maybe I was born evil.
She’d always suspected it. From everything she’d learned, even her birth into the world had been a curse and now she’d killed. There was also the fact that she felt dark on the job, some part of her too evil for her to acknowledge until she hunted a target. There was a window or awareness that opened when she was ready to take someone down. She had a sixth sense about things, a natural ability that others didn’t seem to possess. Something dark that led the way when things grew dangerous.

In those moments, she liked it. She was alive when she hunted.

Deirdre took the onramp, joining the interstate and heading back to Lora and Gladys. She hadn’t liked leaving them, but Niam had to be dealt with and at least he wouldn’t be waiting in front of her office anymore.

The road was deserted. Deirdre glanced down at her watch but it had stopped working. She hit the button in the sedan for the time and was surprised when it read three in the morning.

How long was I passed out?
She shook away the surreal sensation trying to take hold. There would be time to worry about her soul, her past, and the consequences of what she’d done later. For now, it was time to get to work.

The cell phone in the car started ringing. A flash of panic went through her when she saw Sabrine’s phone number. She never called during a job unless something serious had happened.

“Hello?”

“Lora’s gone.” Sabrine spoke loudly, there were murmurs in the background. “Tech too. They’re both gone and I don’t know what happened.”

Shit!
She should’ve known better than to leave them. Niam might’ve planned it all as some diversion, fight her while his men moved in and invaded the house. Because of her screw up that little girl was gone.

“Any clues?”

Sabrine paused. “You’re not going to believe this and I’m not sure how important it is.”

There wasn’t anything Sabrine could say that Deirdre would doubt at this point. “Come on, there’s no time for second guessing.”

She expelled a low troubled breath. “All of their possessions are gone. The only trace of them is blood left on the outside of the window.” She paused again. “A bloody thumbprint on the outside of the second floor window, with no way to access it from the ground.”

“Is Gladys still there?”

“Yes.”

Deirdre had never gone up against anything like this. Sabrine was thorough, rarely wrong and if she said there was blood on the outside of the windows, then there was blood, but Deirdre had no idea what that meant.

From somewhere deep inside, almost like a lightning bolt, came a thought. A thought that couldn’t be hers, yet it was there. In her mind was understanding and before Deirdre could control her mouth the words came out.

“Tamara Haas’ people have taken her up the coast about an hour from where you are. The town is called Newbern. They did magic, blood magic for transport. It’s an old spell where the subject appears in the spell caster’s circle. No trace of them left behind. The blood you saw was their last ditch effort to hold their place. The glass was the only medium that could maintain anything of them.”

Deirdre touched her mouth, wondering how she knew any of it. The last location they had for Haas’ house was in Europe and she had heard of blood magic but wouldn’t have understood what had happened to Lora.

“Why would they take Tech?” Deirdre asked, then answered her own question. “He must’ve been awake and studying Lora’s history. That kind of mental connection in the same house would take him with her. No one else was taken because they were asleep and disconnected from the girl or main focus of the spell.”

“Deirdre? You sound a little weird.”

That was an understatement. She felt weird as hell and then the truth of what had happened in that basement became obvious. It had been a binding spell and Niam was bound to her even in death.

Then she felt the cold darkness that she always associated with Niam. He eased across her thoughts and she fought the urge to scream. A foreign weight filled her mind and at once she knew real terror.

“Niam?” There was no reply but she felt him, creeping in the quiet places in her mind. He lived there. He lived in her. “Niam!”

“What are you talking about? Deirdre, I’m not following.”

The smoke had crept forward, coming to her lips. She remembered the cold, the slick feel of the air sliding inside her before she’d passed out. Niam had completed his binding spell. He had access to her body after all.

“He’s inside me, Sabrine!” She swerved in the road, heard the reflectors thump under her tires before she pulled the car back into its lane. “The bastard found a way to win.”

“What are you talking about?”

Deirdre sounded insane and she knew it. In the back of her mind throughout the chaos, she felt things lurking that shouldn’t be there. Things she’d never done came to mind, repulsive things with dozens of females Deirdre had never desired to touch. Murders, slaughters, and the deepest part was the magic. A new dark force flooded through her and in the quiet of her car, the force seemed overwhelming. It was more than Niam, but part of the house. Of course he had always been part of that damn place, claiming power could come through an inanimate object and so now she learned that it had. Stone House was as dangerous as any living entity and it had entered her with Niam.

She thought she’d escaped. Thought that fleeing from the stone building and feeling the wind on her face would set her free but the house wasn’t going to allow her escape again. Sure, as a child, she had lived through the fire. She’d come back to investigate Farmer’s finds, but a third time, this time, the house wouldn’t permit it. It had caught her after all.

“Deirdre?”

Sabrine’s voice broke through her thoughts. She’d forgotten about the phone, their conversation, all she held onto was the idea that something had gotten inside of her and she didn’t know how to get rid of it.

“Deirdre?”

“I’m going to…” Where was she going? She couldn’t think. Other things kept getting in the way, playing against her thoughts, her memories until she had trouble separating the two. “Can’t go to Mooney’s, the cops will be there. Meet me at my house. Bring Gladys.”

“Is there anything I can do for you Deirdre?” Sabrine’s voice filled with concern and Deirdre wished she could tell her that everything was fine, things would get better, but Deirdre had no idea if any of that were true.

“Do you know a good exorcist or perhaps a top-notch witch?”

“What happened, Deirdre? What happened when you were back at that place?”

“I’m not sure but I’m not the same.” Work. She had to concentrate on work and one little girl who still needed her. “We have to save Lora. She can’t face those people alone.”

Deirdre ended the phone call and pulled to the side of the interstate. This flood of information and awful images filled her head. She tried to stop it, slow it. Control, everything was about control and she would have to deal with whatever damage Niam had done if she were going to save Lora.

The trigger had been the news about Lora. Maybe she could tap Niam. She searched her mind for information, anything Niam might’ve left in her brain. Something that would lead her to the sweet little girl with the sad eyes.

At first Deirdre fought the images of Niam looking in the mirror, the incantations he’d studied, and the sound of his voice. He was there so completely that it felt like her. She remembered hurting people and enjoying it.

Heat filled her head, starting in a line in the middle of her forehead and spreading like a spider web, filling in, moving across. Niam was trying to take over. There was a push, a crowding. She didn’t know what to do, didn’t want to give into this beast that seemed to be possessing her or trying to take over some degree of her functions.

She couldn’t let him win. There was no telling what part of his plan this fulfilled. If anything, this had to be a back-up strategy, in case she defeated him. It seemed even in death he was a poor sport.

“Get out of my head!”

Her thoughts pushed against Niam’s memories and the battle raged until she thought her head would split. Then the radio started playing a tune, a familiar song that she used to love. The music eased the gates closed. Niam let up his slow progress, letting her relax for a second, and that was a mistake. She stopped fighting.

Deirdre sat back in her seat and Niam washed over her, filing away things as if they were her own. She tried to push back, regain the nether reaches of her mind where things were kept, stored until called on. It was too late. Like a bolt he slid into place, carving out a notch for himself. His assault was quick and complete, releasing emotions that Deirdre had carefully suppressed. Rage, sadness, and hope poured open causing a plethora of things she’d denied wanting, not really feeling, and suddenly they were there.

Niam wasn’t finished with her yet. While the emotions brought her to hysterics, crying and laughing at once, he showed Deirdre her mother. Niam’s last memory of her wasn’t on the field but in Deirdre’s bedroom.

“No!” She no longer needed Tech’s folder with its secrets. Her head was ready to combust with them. “Please stop.”

She knew why she always associated the fire with her mother’s voice. Somehow, she’d heard her or sensed her mother in the building. It had to have been the moment she started to jump from the second floor. Her mother had been there, her mother had come back for her. Her mother tried to destroy the house to find her Deirdre.

“Please stop it, Niam.”

But there was more. Always more. Niam wouldn’t stop the show and she felt his glee in her pain. She fought with everything in her to bring the beast under control. This was her body, her mind. Still whenever she gained an inch he showed her more truths more horrible things that had been hidden.

A tractor trailer whizzed by, shaking her car. It broke the battle long enough for her to look up and Niam gained another foothold inside her. She couldn’t hold her concentration forever and Niam knew it. More images came and Deirdre started bawling like a baby.

“I didn’t know you were in there, Momma.” She covered her face with her hands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

The air was cool although Ryan Farmer could no longer feel it. For a moment, he thought he might be hungry but that too faded along with the pain in his leg. Everything was second place to his agenda. Only one thing played in his mind, passing over his lips in taunting, quiet whispers.

“I must get Deirdre.”

In his hand was a photograph of Lora Shope. It was a lure in case a swift assault failed and Deirdre didn’t come along easily. The picture was frightening. At least he thought so when he’d first gazed upon it. Now it didn’t matter. The terrified child tied to a pole with duct tape over her mouth seemed no more out of place than if she’d appeared in a school picture.

Tamara had given him two things. One was the photograph, the second was a syringe, capped and waiting in his back pocket. Deirdre would have to be drugged or so Tamara had said. Reasoning with her or trying to overpower the warrior would prove ineffective. These things Ryan understood, even if he really wanted to hurt her the old fashioned way, with bare hands.

“I want to play a game.” His voice sing-songed. “Play with me Dragonfly. Play with me. I must get Dragonfly. Deirdre must be mine.”