Authors: SM Reine
Alain darted around the circle, fast as a bullet. Elise didn’t expect it.
He snatched at her, and she stepped aside fast enough that his swinging hand caught her necklace instead of her arm. The chain snapped. Her mother’s cross vanished into a hole in the floor.
His second attempt to grab her succeeded. His fingers dug painfully into her bicep.
“Or one gate and one Godslayer with two marks,” Mr. Black finished. The word shocked through her.
Elise twisted out of Alain’s grip and made a break for the door, but the older kopis was in the way. Mr. Black blocked her with his body. She swung a punch, but he ducked.
She heard the click of a gun behind her.
Elise threw herself to the ground before Alain could fire, sweeping a leg out to hook it behind the witch’s ankle. He dodged her, and Mr. Black was suddenly on top of her, pinning her to the ground with his hand at her throat.
There was no hint of the Southern gentleman in him when he struck her across the face hard enough to scatter her vision with black stars.
“The crane,” he said.
Alain disappeared, and she heard the whirring of a machine a moment later.
She threw her weight into him, shoving Mr. Black onto his back. He grabbed her calf and forced her to the ground again when she tried to stand.
He fisted her shirt, lifted her head an inch off the ground, and punched her so hard her skull bounced. The world fuzzed around Elise.
Mr. Black sat up. Her limbs were too heavy to respond. He smoothed graying hair off his forehead. Gestured to Alain beyond the line of her foggy vision. Stood up, kicked her in the ribs. She folded around the blow as pain blossomed in her side.
“‘Greatest,’” he said scornfully. “A travesty.”
Blood pulsed through her veins, clearing her head with the speedy recovery of a kopis. But it wasn’t speedy enough. A metal hook descended toward her face.
Elise took a deep breath, jumped to her feet, and made another dash for the door.
Her throbbing head made her too slow. Mr. Black caught her in a bear hug, and it turned out he was exactly as strong as he looked. Despite his age, he was easily Elise’s match—except that he had a good fifty pounds on her, and in such close quarters, size would always win out.
She stomped on his instep and drove her elbow into his gut. He grunted, but didn’t let go.
Alain forced her wrists together, pinning both of her arms under his while he wound rope around her hands. Then he peeled the glove off her right hand, and she spit in his face. Phlegm slapped in his eye.
“Get the other one,” Mr. Black said.
She tried to twist her arms away, but there was nowhere to go. Alain removed the other glove.
“No!”
Elise clenched both fists shut. It was like trying to close her hands over crackling balls of electricity. Her skin tingled and burned from fingertip to wrist.
The marks on her palms had minds of their own. They longed to be united with the symbol on the gate, and the harder she fought to keep them contained, the worse it burned.
“To the crane, please, Alain.”
The aspis went to the control panel again and swung the crane six feet clockwise, within Mr. Black’s reach. He let go of Elise long enough to grab the hook and loop it through her ropes.
Alain flipped a lever. The crane lifted with a squeal to drag her arms over her head. Gravity strung her body into one long line. And then her feet were off the ground, and she was swinging toward the gate.
She jerked to a halt an arm’s length from the capstone. The stone vibrated, giving a low buzz that dug deep into her skull, and it was hard to breathe or think or move. Her spine and shoulders ached from the suspension.
“Wonderful,” Mr. Black said, dusting off his hands as though he had just cleaned something filthy. “And now the wards, please.”
Alain knelt by the curved lines of symbols and touched them, whispering words of power.
Light flamed to life around the gate. Heat flushed into the air, sweeping Elise in a torrent of flame and power. The marks on her hands were too strong to control. An electric shock of pain lanced down her arms.
Her left hand popped open and wouldn’t close. Blood trailed down her wrist.
“No,” she ground out through gritted teeth.
Where was James?
The fingers on her right hand trembled, and the gate glowed with life.
From her point of view near the top of the gate, Elise saw something stir beyond the line of light glowing from Alain’s binding spells. Wisps of black smoke curled under the door to the hallway.
Mr. Black hadn’t noticed. “This would go much faster if you relaxed,” he called.
Alain crossed the other side of the power circle and touched it again. It pulsed with light. “It is ready. We can open the gate.”
“Miss Kavanagh, would you be so kind?”
“Turn around,” she yelled back.
He spun and saw the door. “What the—?” Mr. Black flung it open, and black smoke poured into the room. He coughed and threw an arm over his face. “Alain! Fire!”
The witch drew his gun and plunged into the hall.
Her right hand burned and her fingers twitched. The gate’s hum had grown louder with the sense of her presence, and the air within rippled and swirled.
She could hear her name. Someone was calling to her.
Elise…
And then her right hand opened.
Her palms pressed together in a position of prayer. Blood spurted from the marks. Power erupted between Elise and the gate to form a thick cord of energy that shocked her deep into her bones.
Suddenly, there was no noise. No shadow. She floated in a white void with no arms, no dangling legs, no skin or body or marks.
A wistful, distant sigh pierced the emptiness.
Elise… is it really you?
Her eardrums rocked with the voice. Her skull split in half. She was falling apart, and it was all she could do to scream and keep breathing and stay within her mind. It could have been seconds or years, or no time at all.
Oh, Elise…
Eternity stretched in front of her: the severe, frowning face of her father the last time she saw him; a cold expanse of Russian tundra; rain spattering against glass as a train rushed her through green pastures; pale white hands stretching toward her, stroking her cheek, touching her hands…
But just as suddenly, the void vanished.
Someone was screaming, and it wasn’t Elise. She gasped and choked on smoke.
Fire consumed the east wing of Mr. Black’s manor.
She blinked watering eyes, struggling to focus through the fire to the fight below her. The circle of power had failed. James straddled the lines with several paper spells clutched in each hand, and flames shot up the walls and devoured the exposed beams of the ceiling. Alain was unconscious at his feet.
“You idiot! Don’t you realize what you’ve done?” Mr. Black shouted, but his voice was lost in the crackle of his burning home.
Elise recovered enough to swing her legs forward and then back, throwing her entire body in a wide arc. Then she flipped her feet up, kicked off the gate, and levered herself to crouch on top of the crane. Lowering her arms felt painfully good.
Where her foot had connected with the gate, the ethereal stone cracked. The bowl split.
Clenching her knees tight on either side of the crane’s arm, she reached over and clawed at the capstone with both hands. There was barely enough slack for her to reach. Even though it was old and crumbling, she only managed to wrench a small piece free—hardly bigger than a fingernail.
It was enough. The gate stopped humming and glowing.
With an almighty groan, it began to collapse.
One pillar separated from the second. Elise had half a second to realize that it was falling toward her before it crashed into the arm of the crane.
Her stomach flew into her throat as she tumbled toward flame.
The crane smashed into a wall, and she was flung off the top of it. Her arms were nearly wrenched from their sockets. She cried out. Her legs dangled a few feet off the ground.
The fire crawled toward her, consuming the remaining floorboards inch by inch. Plumes of smoke and burning air swept up her body as the second pillar collapsed into the opposite wall and shattered windows.
Wind blasted more heat toward her, and she kicked her legs up, trying not to get burned.
“James!” she shouted.
He glanced over his shoulder at her, mouth opening in surprise—and Mr. Black seized the opportunity to lunge.
Both men went rolling across the torn floor and vanished down a hole.
Elise groaned, twisting her wrists in the ropes again. They rubbed against her slick, bloody skin, but the loops were too tight to slip free. “Come on,” she grunted, twisting her arms as hard as she could. The flames licked at her feet.
And then James staggered out of the smoke. He held a knife that looked like it belonged to Mr. Black.
He stretched on his toes to slice the ropes at her wrist. Elise collapsed, and he caught her. After having her wrists bound for so long, her arms tingled and burned with pinched nerves.
“Are you okay? Can you walk?”
She nodded. He set her on her feet.
“Mr. Black? Alain?” she asked.
“Unconscious. Hurry!”
They found the door to the hall more by luck than by sight. James’s spells had done the trick. Each of the external walls was consumed in fire, and they had to crouch low to keep breathing.
When she moved for the entryway, he pushed her in the opposite direction.
“This way out!”
They found an open window in one of the bedrooms—likely the way James had entered—and climbed onto the lawn. Sucking in fresh air was a huge relief to Elise. But she didn’t stop to enjoy it.
She ran for the front door.
“Where are you going?” James asked, halfway down the path. “Elise, don’t!”
She shoved into the building again and ran for the burning study, covering her nose and mouth with the crook of her elbow. Ash swept into her eyes, sending tears cascading down her cheeks.
Elise didn’t need her eyesight to find the lockbox she had spotted on the earlier tour of the house. She remembered the position of the desk—kitty corner to the door, opposite the passage to the kitchen—and pushed blindly through the smoke to find it.
She heard James calling her from the entryway and ignored him, searching blindly under the desk with one bare hand while the other was still pressed to her side in a fist.
Her fingers touched metal. She closed them around the handle.
The lockbox was heavy and awkwardly large, but she hugged it to chest and barreled out of the office again anyway. James looked relieved to see her, but he didn’t waste time asking where she had been. He grabbed her arm and hauled her outside.
The roof of the entryway collapsed behind them, sending billowing clouds of dust exploding out the door.
All the smoke she inhaled caught up with her two steps later. Elise fell to her knees, lockbox cradled in her arms, and hacked something thick and black onto the grass.
“Are you okay?” James asked, kneeling beside her.
She nodded without speaking.
Elise turned to take a last look at Mr. Black’s manor. The entire manor was consumed, as were half of the trees and grass around it. The level of power required for such magic was staggering.
He gave a guilty smile. “I had to make sure,” he said.
Elise recalled the gate and the voice and felt no shame. “Good. Help me up.”
She shifted the weight of the lockbox under one arm, and James slung her other arm over his shoulder, bending over to lift her to her feet. Together, they staggered down the path to the gate.
She was never sure if it was her imagination or not, but she thought she heard Mr. Black screaming behind them.
I
t took them
three weeks to figure out how to open the lockbox.
First, James and Elise moved to another city—another country, as a matter of fact. They ate good food, drank water until their throats no longer burned, and enjoyed the comforts of a nice hotel. And then they set their minds to the task of the box.
The combination dial wasn’t the difficult part, nor were the double keys on the back. Spending months scrounging for survival and stealing to eat had taught them a few unsavory tricks for opening things that were meant to stay closed. Yet even when the tumblers were in place and the dial was broken, the lid still wouldn’t open.
“Magic,” James said, showing Elise a rune on the bottom of the box. “That damn Alain Daladier was a master of the binding spells. If anyone could contain a deity behind magic walls, it might have been him.”
“Can you undo it?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure.”
So for weeks, James worked. Elise bulked up on protein and bought lots of spare gloves.
And then, one Thursday morning, he gave an excited shout. Elise hurried inside from their balcony, where she had been staring at Vancouver and doing her best to think of blissful nothingness. She had finally grown comfortable enough with James to ignore him and relax, which was more than she could say about anyone else.
Elise stopped on the edge of his circle of power, which took up most of the hotel room. He was seated on a cushion with an array of crystals and a poultice that reeked of dragon’s blood. “Well?”
“I think I’ve done it,” James said. “Watch.”
He passed a pearl over the rune, and the lid swung open. He looked inside. His mouth dropped open.
Elise’s heart beat a little faster. “What is it?”
With one hand, he pulled out a stack of cash. With the other hand, he pulled out a diamond necklace. “I think everything is about to get a lot easier,” James said.
She forgot that she wasn’t supposed to break the circle and jumped on him. They hugged, laughed, and counted their cash.
It was the first time they were genuinely happy together, and it was far from the last.
P
ART
S
IX
He Comes
XIV
JULY 2009