Defying Fate (7 page)

When the pressure vanished, he was left gasping, muscles fluid.

Allyson had spoken a word of power. And she had written magic sewn into her armband.

How?

Not only had Allyson somehow obtained magic—
powerful
magic, which James shared with no one—she had managed to prevent it from combusting, so that it was reusable. A feat that he had yet to manage himself.

“Well,” James said again.

That was definitely a grin now. Allyson placed a finger on another symbol and pointed at him.

He didn’t wait to see what she unleashed. James touched a mark on his left collarbone, a place that he had drawn a spell of protection.

Allyson’s next hit smashed into his mind like waves beating a cliff in a storm. The pain on his collarbone increased as it burned through the magic within the ink, the skin underneath, the bone.

She lost power before he did. The pain vanished.

James jerked his sleeve to his elbow, touched another mark, and whipped his hand at her.

Heat blossomed from his palm and took form inches from the skin. All of the moisture vanished from the mud beneath his feet. The rain evaporated.

A brilliant fireball, white-blue with heat, blazed from his palm.

Allyson shrieked and fell, rolling her burning arm against the ground.

James’s aim was poor—he had only gotten her left shoulder. But the cloth had been consumed, and so was the skin underneath. It smelled like hamburgers on the Fourth of July.

In her desperation, Allyson cast another spell.

It wasn’t as strong as the first two—hard to concentrate while one’s arm was on fire. But the earth bulged beneath his feet, lifting him like an earthmover had scooped the ground out from under him.

He raised two feet, and dropped.

James’s foot slipped on the rocky debris. He landed on his ass.

St. Vil took the opportunity to pounce. The kopis was on top of him instantly, smashing his fists into him over and over. James shielded his face with his arms.

“Move!” Allyson roared, shoving St. Vil aside. She was smoking faintly. Her arm was limp at her side.

She didn’t give James time to stand.

Allyson slapped a hand to the armband. He spread his fingers across several marks on his bicep.

They cast at the same time.

Their power rocked together. Equal pressure, equal strength.

James shoved with his power, and Allyson shoved right back. He ignited mark after mark. Lightning flashed, energy pulsed, the ground shook. None of them landed. Allyson’s shields were too good.

The nearest segment of fence blew outward, sending metal and concrete showering into the forest. James expected to hear alarms, but none came.

As their magic fought, so did their bodies. James grappled with Allyson, trying to shove her to the ground. He was stronger, bigger, more athletic, yet she was far hungrier for his blood.

Her thumbnail pressed against his eyelid, trying to dig into the socket. He bit her wrist. Allyson jerked back.

She rolled him and ended up straddling his hips. She was even heavier than she looked.

Allyson drove her unburned elbow into his solar plexus. It knocked the breath out of him.

James gasped for oxygen, and Allyson stood, letting him curl onto his side as his diaphragm seized.

She delivered a swift kick to his groin.

Her aim was perfect. It felt like all of his intestines had turned inside out, sucking his testicles into his chest. Heat flushed over him. Nausea filled him from the ends of his hair to the tips of his toes.

James’s finger twitched on a spell written on his bicep. Somehow, he managed to speak.

The magic plunged into Allyson. He felt it connect with the beat of her heart, the flow of blood, the intake of oxygen. The power of the spell built, powered by the fire of her life force.

And then his spell quenched it.

Her eyes went blank. She collapsed.

All of the magic surrounding them was gone instantly, leaving nothing but an empty, steaming field and immense silence.

James gathered his strength to crawl to Allyson’s side. She was still breathing—barely. Her eyelids fluttered rapidly.

His earlier fireball had done more than just burn her arm; it had melted the skin on the left side of her neck all the way up to her cheek. She would have been in for a very long healing period if she had survived. But dead women didn’t need to heal. He could see the life vanishing from her.

He still needed answers.

“Where did you learn to write magic like that?” he asked, grabbing a fistful of her charred shirt. It crumbled in his hands. “Tell me!”

Allyson’s lips cracked when she tried to speak. Her voice croaked in her throat.

Her eyes rolled back in her head.

She was dead.

St. Vil sat among the rubble of the earth, staring at James like he was Satan himself. One of the spells must have injured him—blood streamed from his temple.

“You killed her,” St. Vil said.

James wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. It was a cold night, but he was soaked with sweat.

He pulled the disruptor from her pocket. It hadn’t been burned. Very lucky. James put it in one of the pockets of his Union slacks and stood with a grimace.

The hole in the fence spared him from the problem of getting outside the base, but it also meant he didn’t have transport. Getting away on foot would be difficult. Especially since Gary Zettel was probably realizing that he was missing an aspis right at that moment.

A helicopter circled overhead, its spotlight focused on the forest. Now that the explosions of magic had silenced, he could hear rotors, distant shouts, the quiet chatter in his stolen earpiece.

James stood over St. Vil, whose left knee had a strange twist to it. Broken, most likely. It didn’t support his weight when he tried to get up to attack.

“What do you do for the Union when you’re not shooting out windows in Fallon?” James asked. “Can you work all of the equipment in one of those SUVs?”

“You think I’m a moron? Of course I can! I’m a pilot. I can drive anything they’ve got.”

“Good,” James said, pulling St. Vil’s arm over his shoulder. “You’re coming with me.”

He struggled to escape. “Not a fucking chance!”

“You can come with me, or you can explain to Zettel what happened to his aspis. Your choice.”

The kopis stared at Allyson. He actually looked scared now. James had been worrying that the man wasn’t smart enough to get scared.

“They’ll kill me,” St. Vil said.

“I can do that, too. And yes, that is a threat.”

James started walking without releasing St. Vil’s arm. The kopis didn’t respond. He also didn’t try to fight back.

They stepped through the hole in the fence and plunged into the dark forest.

VII

The trees parted, and a
meadow emerged from the forest like something out of a nightmare.

Hannah Pritchard had spent the last twenty years of her life finding reasons not to step into that clearing, which the White Ash Coven used for initiations. But it was the only way to find Pamela’s house—all other routes were bewitched.

And now she was standing on the brink of the meadow, trying to convince herself to keep walking.

The sunlight didn’t seem as clear in this part of the forest, as though it shined through a gray filter. The blossoms were washed out and limp. It had been raining, but there was no mud within the circular trench bordering the meadow; the circle of power dried the rain immediately. It left the meadow trapped in perpetual summer, on the verge of catching fire.

It hadn’t always been that way. The high priestess used to be careful about regulating the containment spells. But it had been a long time since the coven had a high priestess, and even longer since the coven had cared about the earth it scorched in pursuit of victory.

“Don’t worry,” she told Nathaniel when he approached. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

His brown eyes flashed with anger as he walked down the trail. “I’m not afraid.”

Maybe that was the truth. If so, then it could only be because Nathaniel was still too young, too naïve, to know that he should be afraid.

She swallowed down her anxiety and gripped her cell phone tighter. “Don’t worry,” Hannah whispered, bracing herself.

She stepped over the line of the circle…and felt nothing.

Nathaniel tromped through the grass without any hint of hesitancy. Silent disdain filled his eyes. “Most of the circle’s protections have been disabled. I could tell as soon as we got out of the car.”

Hannah quickened her pace to catch up with him. Dried grass crunched under their feet.

“Disabled?”

“Someone’s tampered with it,” Nathaniel said matter-of-factly.

“How do you know?”

The condescending curve to Nathaniel’s mouth was identical to his father’s. “I just do.”

Hannah led him to a fallen log that marked the hidden path. “I hate showing up without warning someone,” she said, checking the cell phone again. No missed calls. James had said that he would get in touch with his parents and call her back days ago.

“You can’t warn an empty house.”

“But
someone
should be there. It’s not normal for the house to be unoccupied.”

“The whole coven’s probably skyclad and drunk and pretending to draw down the moon.” He rolled his eyes. “Stop worrying about it.”

“You’re too young to be so cynical,” Hannah said.

He responded with a heavy sigh.

Twelve years old and already a critic. Wasn’t that supposed to hit after puberty?

They left the meadow behind as they took the hidden path. Hannah remembered having to step carefully over slugs that used that trail as a highway when she was a girl. But there were neither slugs nor herbs now. Brambles snagged the sleeves of her pea coat as she passed.

A few twigs had become stuck in Nathaniel’s hood. She plucked them out and smoothed his black hair flat. He ducked under her touch.

“You know,” she said hesitantly, “if you want to talk about—”

He didn’t let her finish. “I know.”

It had been months since Hannah and Nathaniel returned from Hell, yet he hadn’t talked about it even once. She had been locked in a cage, watched Belphegor peel skin off of other prisoners, and heard the damned screaming from within the pits. None of that scared her as much as the idea of what Nathaniel must have seen while he had been running around with Elise.

Since he wouldn’t talk, Hannah could only imagine what was bothering him. Had he seen a slave auction? The human butcher shops? Witnessed the curing of slave-skin leather?

“Can I tell you what I saw?” Hannah asked.

“No.”

She was spared the unique hell that was trying to communicate with her preteen son when she spotted a signpost. The text burned into the wood was faded with time, but she found the name “Faulkner” with her fingertips.

They were almost there.

Hannah took the left-hand fork toward the old Faulkner house. The branches were too thick for sunlight to penetrate that part of the forest.

The Faulkner house had been kept in better condition than the ritual space in the meadow. The windows were new—Hannah had helped replace them last spring. The weeds had been pulled around the path, too.

But there was no light inside, and no cars outside. James’s parents definitely weren’t there.

Hannah stopped her son with a hand on his shoulder. “I think something is wrong.” He rolled his eyes, shoved open the door, and stepped through. “Nathaniel, stop!”

She followed him inside.

The couches were covered in plastic, and the antique rocking chair next to the fireplace looked like it had been recently polished. The clock on the mantel ticked too loudly in the silence of the unoccupied house. Someone must have been there to wind it. Hannah reached into the mechanisms to stop the clock.

Nathaniel dropped his backpack next to the door and slid his jacket off. He was wearing that harpy wool shirt he had picked up in Dis again. “So where are Grandma and Grandpa?”

“I don’t know,” Hannah said, flipping the light switch. Nothing happened.

The floorboards creaked when they stepped into the kitchen. Hannah checked the empty refrigerator. Even though it was plugged into the outlet, it wasn’t running, and the shelves were warm. The house didn’t have any power.

Nathaniel grabbed a box of Lucky Charms out of the pantry as Hannah continued to explore. She peered down the hall. All of the bedroom doors stood open, like eye sockets gaping out of a dried skull.

The electrical panel was hidden under a tapestry next to Pamela’s office door. All of the breakers were turned on. There just wasn’t any power.

“I’m not mad at you,” Nathaniel said from behind her. When she looked askance at him, he swallowed another mouthful of cereal and said, “I’m not being quiet because I’m mad, and it’s not because I’m scared or scarred or damaged. You just don’t want to know what I saw in Dis.”

He looked like such an adult, standing there in his jeans and hiking boots. More like a teenager than her baby.

“You can tell me anything,” Hannah said. “You know that.”

The house suddenly trembled.

An earthquake?

Hannah braced her hands on the wall, staring up at the lights as they swung from side to side. The floorboards trembled, the old walls groaned, and Pamela’s office door swung shut.

Once the shaking stopped, a deep silence followed.

A creeping sensation crawled through Hannah’s hairline, down the back of her neck, and slithered over her spine. She wasn’t sure why, but she was certain that
that hadn’t been an earthquake.

“Put your jacket back on,” she told Nathaniel.

“Why?” he asked, a marshmallow rainbow stuck to his bottom lip.

She snagged his backpack off the floor. “Just do what I say.” Hannah opened the front door to exit—but Landon stood on the porch.

“Oh, Hannah,” he said, as though pleasantly surprised to see her. The lines on his forehead looked like a road map. “You made it. Wonderful.” Landon stepped in, forcing her to back away to let him enter. He closed the door very deliberately. “And Nathaniel, too. All the better.”