Blood Magic (41 page)

Josephine was in them all.

Her power had to be enormous. How could the binding spell contain her? What if it wasn’t enough to bind her body—what if we had to bind all the trees and every single little animal she possessed? Was I strong enough?

The silence dripped down my skin like rain. Goose bumps rose on my arms and neck. My palm, the one with the cut I’d
made last night, to show Nick my poisonous blood, ached and itched. I opened my hand, staring down at it.

I’d kept it broken to remind myself what Nick had said.
This is who I am
.

All it had taken that night in the field, the first time I’d kissed Nick, when the flowers had exploded around me, was blood. Reese had healed the deep cut on my chest with just will, blood, and need. And banishing possession, and possession itself … so many of the spells only required blood. Blood and … imagination. Oh, boy, did I have that in spades.

I just had to want it more than Josephine.

I looked back to Eric. I hated that his eyes were closed. Like Josephine wasn’t really paying attention to me. But she had so many other eyes. Rat eyes. Fox eyes. Crow eyes. “Josephine. Tell me why you want the spell book. Why does any of that matter if all we ever need is blood?”

“You want to talk philosophy, Silla? Right now?” Eric’s eyes snapped open and his fingers twitched.

“I’d rather find your body and tear it into a dozen pieces.” But what I wanted was for someone—anyone—to explain this stupid, impossible magic to me.

She laughed, and even through Eric’s weary voice I could hear her delight. “Wouldn’t you just. But very well. A quick lesson: It’s hard to pull your will out of the reality you’ve always known, isn’t it? Even when you see with your own eyes? Taste with your own tongue? The spells help us form our will. Fire symbolizes certain things to us—cleansing, destruction, transformation—things that have been the same or nearly so for millennia. Ritual bridges the gap between what we sense
with our hands and eyes and ears and what we believe is possible in our hearts and minds. And words are the sharpest tools we have to trick our minds into having faith that the magic will work. Belief, will, faith—whatever you want to call it. I have only met one person who had such a complete understanding of the magic, had such faith in it that he could make mountains move without a word.”

“The Deacon,” I said, before I could stop.

“Yes. The Deacon. A humble name for one near godhood.”

I shivered at the worshipful tone in Eric’s voice. And was suddenly glad I hadn’t tried contacting the Deacon. Inside the kangaroo pocket, I held tight to the cold metal of the scissors.

The back door slid open, and I glanced over my shoulder, reluctant to turn my back on Josephine’s forest. Nick had a blue paper bag of salt under his arm.

He came to stand beside me. “Okay, we have what you want.”

Eric’s head lifted, eyes open and staring.

“Now what?” I called.

Eric’s face parted in a gruesome smile. “Now Nick and I go desecrate some graves.”

“I will
not
help you do that!” Nick shouted.

“You won’t have a choice. Your body is mine.”

I laughed. I actually laughed. “You’re so wrong, Josephine. You can’t have us. We have armor.” And I held out my rings. “You should know that.”

“Oh, silly, silly girl.” Eric’s mouth pulled into a mocking frown. “Didn’t you
know
? Armor like that only works for the person it’s made for.”

Nick whispered in my ear, “Be bound, to the ground.”

The grass at my feet exploded up, spitting chunks of earth at me, and thick, snakelike roots grabbed hold of my ankles. I kicked and jerked away, but fell back and slammed into the ground. Pain jolted up through my bones, and I tasted blood on my tongue a moment before sharp pain caught up to where I’d bitten the tip.

Roots kept bursting up through the ground, winding around my legs. I yelled, wordlessly, reaching down and tearing at them. Crows took to the sky, screeching and beating their wings. The roots stilled, but I was stuck. They tightened when I pulled, like a Chinese finger trap. I twisted onto my stomach and searched, but Nick was gone.

It was like being in the dog dream, where I’m bombarded by images and sensations and can’t control them or make any sense of them—but it doesn’t matter anyway, because my brain hasn’t really kicked in. It was so much worse than before, in Silla’s front yard. I’d been able to fight then, push and feel the capillaries in my fingers and toes burn. Now I was nothing but a viewer.

But I’m glad I wasn’t fully engaged.

The ground trembled, and I saw flashes of a great mechanical arm in front of me, thudding into the earth again and again.

A thing, a slimy, awful thing, clung inside my head, made my feet move, my hands move, directed my eyes and lips. I heard slick thoughts that weren’t my own, longings and anger and old, old sorrow, crowding me as I watched the backhoe excavate Reese’s grave.

The sky was perfectly clear above me. In the circle of forest where I lay tied down with roots, it was dark and shadowed,
but up there, where the crows wheeled in frenetic circles, it was light. The sun shone.

Below me, I felt the earth. I imagined it sinking down for miles, through dirt and bedrock, through tectonic plates, and all the way to the burning core of the world. How far down did Josephine’s reach extend? She had trees, birds, animals. Why not the earth itself?

She had Nick. And Eric. She’d had Reese, and I could not let everything now spiral out of control like it had so quickly the night he’d died.

I pressed my eyes closed. I had to free myself, to find Josephine’s body and bind it before she hurt anybody else. The scissors.

Digging in, I withdrew them and sat up. Most of the crows had flown off, but a few hopped around me. They watched, flapping their wings. I’d have to be fast, because Josephine would know what I was doing. The other possessed woodland creatures were hiding. Waiting for something. Eric’s limp body swayed slightly in the wind. My stomach twisted; I put the scissors against one of the roots, and sawed at it. The blade cut in, smoothly, and I kept slicing. It took forever to hack through, and several of the possums had crept out from under the trees.

They looked like alien rat-monsters. These had blood on their snouts.

I slashed at the next root, and heard a crow caw. There was grunting. It sounded like pigs. Did Nick have wild pigs in his woods? I didn’t look. Instead I cut at my wounded palm, and
smeared the blood over both hands. I grabbed roots and ordered, “Release. Now. Let me go!” I imagined them snaking back, quickly. I was good at imagining—I did it all the time and it made me a great actress, being able to slip into another reality for a few hours, to believe I was someone else. I could do it.

I closed my eyes and imagined being free. “Release me. Release. Release.” The memory of Nick using poetry to focus surfaced. My brain scrambled for rhyme. “Roots release me, let me free. Earth release me, let me free. Blood release me, let me free.” I built up the picture in my mind: the roots cracking and breaking apart.

The roots crumbled into ashes.

Gasping, I stumbled to my feet and turned to face the forest. The possums chattered at me, hissing through their horrible teeth. Shadows fluttered overhead. Crows. They circled like vultures. Josephine was everywhere.

I would have to bind the whole forest.

A mask. I needed a mask for this. But not an imaginary one, slipped on only in my mind’s eye. I needed a real one.

Holding out my bleeding hand, I smeared my fingers through the blood, and pressed them to my cheek. My skin burned as the power inside me came crashing out. I painted, streaking blood across my forehead, down my nose, over my chin.

Red, dark, and dangerous.

It was the most genuine mask I’d ever put on. My power, my self. Me.

This is who I am
.

I was inside the grave. Surrounded by walls of wet dirt. Under my feet: Reese’s casket. The pale shine of it was encrusted with mud. All I saw, as my body crouched down, was how white it was, how it gleamed like the moon, or marble.

A click and slow creak as I unlatched and opened the top half of the casket. There he was. His face was slack and gray, mouth hanging open, eyelids half parted. The shadows under his cheekbones were greenish, and his hair fell limp onto the satiny pillow. My heart pounded, blood roaring in my ears like a tornado.

And the smell slid up into my nose. I felt my tongue work as I gagged, but couldn’t lean back or climb out or run. I couldn’t even close my eyes.

My hand rose to my mouth, but instead of covering my nose, I bit my own finger harder than I’d bite into an apple. Pain sharpened my awareness, and for a moment, I was free. I stumbled, landing on the casket hard enough to crack it.

Then the brief freedom was over, and I crawled forward, reached down into the casket, and with my bleeding finger painted a rune onto Reese’s corpse’s forehead.

The skin broke. And a piece of it slid away, down his temple, trailing ooze like a tearstain.

A fat red drop of blood splashed down from above, smacking into Reese’s cheek. Then another.

I looked up—I didn’t want to, but I had to.

A fox crouched at the edge of the open grave, a broken crow in its long jaws. It dropped the crow, and my hands caught
it. They held it out so that the blood spattered onto Reese’s heart, staining the suit he’d been buried in.

I closed my eyes.
I can close my eyes
. I threw the crow aside. Nausea swept through me, and my bitten finger throbbed. I felt it down to my toes. But I didn’t care that it hurt. I controlled my body again. She’d let me go.

Just as I pushed up to my knees on the coffin, Reese’s eyes opened.

Yelping, I fell back again. His eyes were glassy. Dead. But his hands came up and gripped the sides of the casket. He pulled himself to sit. And looked at me. His ruined, grayish hands reached into his lap, and he grasped the spell book.

His lips shook, and a harsh whisper slid out, puckering my skin with horror.

“Nick.”

His breath smelled like rank perfume. He reached for me, but I jolted away, fast. A rough sound like choking burst out of him. He was laughing. Of course—it was Josephine.

Reese’s body stood up, and she turned him to face the grave wall. It was a struggle, but he heaved up over the side.

I pressed into the earth and tried to keep breathing.

It would take too long to run all the way around the forest, so I had to go through it, and through all of Josephine’s possessed animals. I walked closer, holding the scissors out like a sword, my injured hand tucked against my side to keep the blood flow down.

A row of squirrels prattled at me, their little snickers cold and awful. Maybe they wouldn’t do anything. Maybe they were only watching.

I reached the edge, where the first trees rose up and spread out their branches. Beyond them was nothing but shadows. The trees twined so close together, and there was so much undergrowth, the sun barely penetrated.

Swallowing, I thought of Nick. I had to get to him. Had to bind Josephine so that she couldn’t hurt him. Or kill him.

Screw the animals. It wasn’t like there were tigers in the woods. So long as I didn’t run into any wild pigs, I should be fine.

I gripped the scissors and strode in.

“Silla.”

It came from above. “Oh, God.” Eric’s eyes were open. Against the mask of blood, they were extremely pale. “Eric?” Was it him? Had Josephine let him go?

“Silla, I feel … Help me down.” His head lolled.

The branches he was tangled in wrapped around his arms, curling under his shoulders and around his chest. Even if I could get up to him, what would happen if I freed him? It was at least a twenty-foot drop. He’d break bones.

“Silla,” he whispered again.

A crow landed on a branch, shaking Eric’s body as it bobbed closer, wings out. It cawed. Eric winced. His throat worked like he was going to puke.

“Hang on,” I called. If it was Josephine, I still had the scissors.

I put my bloody palm against the nearest tree with its
branches holding him aloft. Leaning into it, I said, “Put him down. Bend your branches, and set him onto the ground.” I was descended from the Deacon’s blood. I was strong enough. All I needed was blood. “Obey me,” I whispered, lips brushing the bark. I couldn’t think of any stupid rhymes. “I bled for you, obey me.” I visualized the trees bending, untwining, letting him go.

A rustle and crack alerted me, and I spun. The trees bowed, lowering Eric down. They shifted in the darkness, looking more like liquid than rough wood, like sinuous black ribbons and rope slowly placing Eric onto the leaf-strewn forest floor.

I ran to him. He lay prone. “Eric?” I bit my lip, hesitant to touch him.

“Thanks,” he whispered without opening his eyes.

“Are you hurt?” It was amazing that he was alive. Much less whole.

“Yeah, but … not bad. I think. I just need to lie here.”

“Do you know what’s happening?” I eyed the raccoon shuffling closer to us. It sat back on its haunches and clasped its tiny hands together.