His Father's Eyes - eARC (24 page)

“I do not believe you!”

“Believe what you will. We shall not interfere with them,” the runemyste said with a small gesture that somehow encompassed every human on my father’s land. “But you shall not help your friends, nor will you harm mine.”

She spun toward me both hands held before her. Flames leaped from her fingers. I threw my arms up in a vain attempt to protect myself. I needn’t have bothered. The fire never reached me; it never even came close. Nor was it the shield I had conjured to protect my father and me from the coyote that stopped her spell. The flames simply vanished, swallowed, it seemed, by the air before me.

Saorla screeched her frustration.

Patty whispered something to Witcombe, and an instant later one of Amaya’s guards was thrown into the air. He somersaulted toward the dark sorcerers and landed on his back at Patty’s feet. She stabbed down with the knife, but the man managed to roll out away from the blow.

I pulled the Glock from my jacket pocket and fired off a shot. I aimed for her blade hand, but missed. She gaped at me—maybe she hadn’t considered that I might still have my weapon even after Saorla had disarmed Amaya’s men. And that moment’s hesitation gave Amaya’s man time enough to find his feet. He braced himself to throw a punch, but another spell fell upon him. His head snapped to the side, and he collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut. I had a feeling he was dead before he hit the ground.

Hain grinned.

I fired again, this time at Hain’s head. But in the span of a few seconds between my first shot and my second the weremancers had warded themselves against gunfire. The shot ricocheted back at me, missing my dad and me by inches and gauging a hole in the side of the trailer.

That shot was like the report of a starter’s gun. Abruptly spells were flying in all directions. Luis went down, as did Witcombe and Patty. But in moments all of them were up again, casting as fast they could, trying to find a spell that would overcome their opponents’ wardings. Hain threw spell after spell at my father and me, each one landing like a fist. Our wardings held, but the force of his attacks was enough to leave me dazed; I couldn’t image how my father stayed on his feet.

“Are you—?”

“Don’t worry about me,” he said through clenched teeth. “Just get the bastard.”

Sometimes I thought that weremystes of all sorts were too enamored of fancy spells. Namid had taught me to think in simpler terms. I aimed two spells in quick succession at Hain. With the first I pulled his foot out from under him as I had done to Patty at Witcombe’s house. And as soon as he hit the ground, I cast again.

Hain, the ground beneath him, and a large chasm in the desert dirt.

The crack opened and he let out a cry of surprise and alarm. He teetered on the edge trying to swing himself free, and then toppled into it.

The crack, Hain, and the dirt covering him once more. The spell hummed in the air and I heard another cry, more desperate this time. His arm flailed above ground; I didn’t know how much air he had down there, but for the moment at least I had other concerns.

“That was well done,” Dad said.

“Thank—”

He shoved me aside and cast at the same time. At least I thought the magic came from him. It played along my skin like a summer wind and met the oncoming spell with enough force to shake the ground beneath my feet. The great coyote that had continued to growl and bare its teeth at us all this time flattened its ears and let out a soft whine.

I stared at him. “What the hell.”

“I saw her cast,” Dad said, pointing at Patty. “I don’t know what it was, but she aimed it at you. I met it with a warding of my own, a wall spell, I used to call it.”

“Seemed to work.”

The ground opened again near Patty and Witcombe, and Hain scrabbled out like an insect, his clothes covered with dirt. He nodded once to Patty and they pivoted in unison toward my father and me.

“Ward yourself!” I said.

But they had learned. I felt the spell course in our direction and then pass over us. Stone shattered behind me.

“What was—”

“Crap!” my father said. “Move!” He shoved me again, this time following right on my heels.

I heard a deep metallic groan. Another spell skimmed over us, and more stone broke. Not stone, cinder block. The supports holding up the trailer.

The groan crescendoed, tipped over into a grating shriek. From within the trailer came a frenzy of shattering glass: windows, plates, glasses, picture frames. If it was fragile and my father owned it, it was smashed in those few seconds. And then the trailer fell over, crashing to the ground where my father and I had been standing seconds before.

I conjured fragments of broken cinder block into the air and hurled them at Patty, Hain, and Witcombe, hoping that their warding had been specific to bullets. Surely they hadn’t anticipated that I might throw rock at them.

I think my dad must thought the same thing, because chunks of cinder block rained down on them, opening wounds on their faces and necks, battering them to the ground.

Saorla growled again, her body going rigid as she strained against the magical constraints placed upon her by Namid and his companions. For good measure, I hit her with a piece of cinder block, too.

We threw another volley of stone at the weremancers, but by now they had warded themselves. The fragments fell to the ground in front of them; a few hurtled back our way, but missed us.

My eyes flicked westward. The sun hung just above the horizon, fiery orange and enormous. Looking to the east, I saw the first glimmer of moon glow touching the sky. We had no more than a few minutes before the phasing began. If what Patty said was true, while our minds were at the mercy of the moon, hers and those of her dark sorcerer friends would remain clear. And all would be lost.

You have little time, Ohanko,
I heard in my mind.

Did he really think I needed to be told?

Hain and Witcombe had aimed their spells at Jacinto, Rolon, and the others, pounding them with attack after attack. Amaya’s wardings held, but they were falling back step by step. Hain and Witcombe had only to keep them occupied for a while longer.

An idea came to me, and though I didn’t like it, I didn’t feel that I had much choice. I’d cast with a small bit of blood in the hospital parking lot and had used the fact that I was fighting a necromancer as my excuse. I needed more now, and I didn’t even bother trying to justify the spell I intended to craft. I tore the bandage from my arm, grabbed a shard of window pane from the ground and carved a gash in my arm alongside the scar from the other night. Blood welled, ran over my skin.

The expression on my father’s face nearly stopped me: disapproval, fright, even disgust. “Justis, what are you doing?” But I saw no other way to stop them.

Seven elements: the glow of the moon brightening the eastern horizon, the shape and color of it as it would appear in mere seconds, the land beneath my feet, my mind, my magic, a shield against the phasing, and my blood.

Magic prickled painfully on my arms and neck and down my spine. The blood on my arm was wiped away, and a weight I hadn’t known was there lifted from my mind, like haze blown away by a clean desert wind. Everything was clearer: my vision, my thoughts, my emotions.

“Very good, Jay,” Patty called to me. “You see it now, don’t you? The power of blood magic. It’s like nothing you’ve experienced before, right?”

“You think I’m one of you now.” I shook my head. “You’re wrong. When have you ever used your own blood for a spell? When have you accepted that the power you want demands a cost that you have to pay on your own, without taking it from others?”

More blood seeped from the cut on my arm.

My fist, her face, my blood.

The spell smashed through whatever wardings she had conjured. She staggered back, falling onto her rear. I had aimed the blow with care; didn’t want her using a bloodied nose to strengthen spells of her own.

I saw Paco, Rolon, and Luis cut themselves and cast. Hain and Witcombe went down. Jacinto didn’t draw blood. I couldn’t read his expression, but I guessed that he felt as my dad did about what I had done. That was all right with me.

Patty clambered to her feet again. There was something in her hand, and I wondered for the span of a heartbeat if it was a pistol. Only when she mashed it down on the head of the man next to her did I understand that it was a rock. The man fell to the ground, and she followed him down, her blade flashing with the last rays of the sun.

She laid the knife blade along his throat.

“I’ll kill him,” she said. “You think your own blood is more powerful than someone else’s. Maybe it is. But do you know how much blood I can take from one man? And do you know what I can do with it when my magic is enhanced by the pull of the moon?”

CHAPTER 24

“How many people are you going to kill, Patty?”

“As many as I have to! You think you’ve found some secret formula, don’t you? But your spell won’t last long. You think you’re the first weremyste to use blood against the phasing? You’re not. The spell Saorla put on us is more powerful by far than what you’ve done. You’ve bought yourself a few minutes, that’s all.”

I wanted to argue with her, but already I could feel the weight of the moon pressing down on me once more. She was right. I’d won a moment’s reprieve. The moon wasn’t even up yet and my spell was failing. I suppose a runecrafter could keep the moon at bay all night long, if he was willing to bleed himself to death.

“I can cast again,” I said. “I can keep myself sane long enough to destroy you.”

She shook her head. “You can’t. I’ll bleed this one, and then bleed your friends. I’ll bleed my friends if I have to. Saorla and I have plans. Nothing else matters.” Her gaze flicked in Jacinto’s direction.

Saorla and I have plans.
Once more I thought of Patty’s comment about not needing Witcombe’s money for much longer. She was the competition Amaya had been talking about at his house. I doubt that he knew this, but I was sure of it. And though I wanted to laugh away the possibility—Patty Hesslan, a crime boss? A rival to Jacinto Amaya?—seeing her holding a knife to the throat of a man who was ostensibly her ally in this fight made the possibility seem all too real.

She gave a shrill whistle. The coyote—Hacker—lifted his ears at the sound and trotted back to her.

Patty grinned. “More blood.” She eyed my dad and me, and then looked over at Jacinto and the others. “Are you willing to kill him to save yourselves?”

“So you’ll kill anyone you have to. Just like you killed Heather Royce.”

Witcombe was on her feet again, seeming unsteady and uncertain, her gaze flicking back and forth between Patty and me.

“How do you feel about that, Missus Witcombe? Are you ready to help Patty kill again, like she killed Heather?”

“She did what she had to,” Witcombe said. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“So you approve of what she did to Heather? It didn’t seem like it that night.”

“I was upset. What happened was regrettable. But . . . but I understand now.”

I nodded. “You heard?” I called.

“We heard.”

Witcombe whirled. Patty turned her head sharply, searching for the source of that voice.

Three elements: the camouflage spell, an end to the conjuring, and Kona and Kevin, who had been hidden by it.

They were warded already, and had been since our conversation in the parking garage. A spell from Witcombe forced them back a step, but did no damage. Kona raised her pistol and fired.

“No, Kona!”

The shot rebounded back at her but missed. She ducked belatedly.

But while Patty and Witcombe were still distracted, I cut myself and cast again.

Patty cried out, dropped the knife, which I had heated, and watched as it melted into the desert dirt.

The moon peeked over a ridge of distant mountains, blood red and huge. I felt my thoughts slipping away, slick, like they were coated in oil. I cast the shielding spell again and knew another moment of clarity. But I was more clouded than I had been, and I knew that even this moment of relative sanity wouldn’t last long.

But I saw as well that Patty and Witcombe weren’t doing much more than staring at that rising moon.

“What have you done?” Saorla demanded.

I thought she was talking to me, but she wasn’t. She was facing Namid and the other runemystes.

“We have removed your spell,” Namid said. “Blood of the innocent should not be used to help others escape the laws of magic. Your weremancers will experience the phasing as they are meant to. At least for this night. Take them and go.”

“No!” I said, the word ripped from my chest.

This time they all looked at me.

“Patty and Hain and Witcombe—they’re all guilty of murder. They need to . . . to . . .” I was having trouble keeping my thoughts on track. I could barely remember what I had just said. And I had cast a spell. It was supposed to help in some way. “They’re murderers.” I stared past the woman in the green dress, to two people who were walking toward us. Kona. One of them was Kona.

“He’s right,” she said. “The two women are wanted for the murder of Heather Royce, and the man is wanted in connection with a murder that took place a few nights ago in Sweetwater Park.”

“I will not give them up,” Saorla said. “Let me leave this place, Namid’skemu, with these three who serve me.” She indicated Hain, Witcombe, and Patty. “And I will allow the Fearsson men to live.”

“They’re not yours to bargain away,” Kona said to the runemyste, her voice so cold I wondered if Namid would ice over.

“Perhaps not,” Namid said. “But with Saorla’s help they are too powerful for your jails to hold.”

Kona aimed her weapon at Patty. “There are ways around that.”

“She’s still warded,” I said. “They all are.”

Kona kept her weapon trained on Patty, but she pursed her lips, clearly unsure of where that left her. I hated to admit that Saorla and her weremancers had us beaten. But it was true: They were warded—against bullets, against magic, and, no doubt, against a host of other assaults as well.

But, as it happened, not against everything.

I had forgotten about Hacker. It seemed as though everyone had after Patty called for him. He remained in coyote form, his yellow eyes gleaming with moonlight, his fur tinged with red in the rich light of the setting sun. Now, with a snarl that came from deep in his chest, he leaped at Hain, who was still on his knees, and who, long ago, had spelled Hacker, robbing him of his freedom, making him little more than a slave to the moon and to magic.

Hain was in a moon-induced haze and couldn’t react fast enough. The coyote went for his throat, teeth snapping, paws planted on the weremancer’s chest. Hain fell back with the animal on top of him and let out a gurgling cry as the beast tore at him. Blood soaked his shirt and the ground beneath him. His eyes rolled back in his head.

Saorla made another sharp motion with her hand, and the coyote flew from him, yelping as it hit the ground a few feet away and rolled.

But I wasn’t watching Hacker or Hain.

I saw Patty’s lips moving. She was about to cast using Hain’s blood. God knew what she would do or at whom she would aim her magic. My father, Kona and Kevin, Jacinto and the others, me—any one of us could have been her target.

And so I did the one thing I could think of. Three elements: Patty, a cylinder of magic around her, and all that blood. I cast without hesitation, without thought, without consciously putting the elements into words. I pictured what I had in mind and let the spell fly.

Magic surged through the ground and practically made the air shimmer. I couldn’t have said which of us cast first. It felt as though the spells released simultaneously. The blood vanished and flames shot from her hands. Only to be blocked by the barrier I’d conjured. The fire rebounded, an assault spell fueled by blood; whatever wardings she had placed upon herself before coming here could never withstand such powerful magic. She screamed, flailing and writhing, trapped by my spell and under siege from her own.

Flames swallowed her like some ravenous beast. Her clothes and skin and hair blackened until at last she fell over, still twisting, her movements growing weaker by the moment.

Kona, Kevin, and my dad stared at her, wincing but unable to avert their eyes. Regina Witcombe had covered her mouth with trembling hands. Tears coursed down her face. Even Jacinto and his men flinched at what they saw. Alone among us, Saorla and the runemystes seemed unaffected. Namid and his companions watched Saorla, but the necromancer had her hard glare fixed on me.

“You have cost me a servant I value,” she said. She cast a quick glance at Hain’s body before meeting my gaze again. “Two servants. You will pay a price for that.”

I ignored her. Pointing at Witcombe, I said to Namid, “What about her? She and Patty killed a runemyste, and she was an accessory to Heather Royce’s murder.”

“She is mine!” Saorla said. “I will not lose another.”

I shook my head. “That’s not for you to say.”

“She cannot be held by a jail, Ohanko. You know this.”

“She killed one of your kind! You’d let her go?”

“I am helpless to do otherwise.”

Saorla’s mouth curved into a great big shit-eating grin. I would have loved to say or do something to wipe it from her winsome face, but my thoughts were fragmenting again. It was all I could do to follow the rest of the conversation.

“What about my damn murder investigations?” Kona asked.

“I believe they are solved,” Namid said. “The man who committed the murder in the park is dead, as is the woman who killed Heather Royce. Do I have all of that right?”

Kona frowned, but after a moment she nodded. “Yeah, I suppose.”

Namid turned to Saorla. “We have a bargain then, you and I. You will take the Witcombe woman and go. And you will leave the Fearsson men alone.”

“And the people we love,” I said, thinking of Billie and of Kona.

Namid weighed this and then nodded. “And those they love.”

Saorla shook her head. “Unacceptable.”

“It is, for the most part, the bargain you proposed.”

“I demanded all three of my servants!”

Namid’s shrug was so casual that even in something of a daze, I had to keep from laughing. “Two of them are now dead, through no fault of mine.” He pointed my way. “Nor of his.”

“His spell killed her!”

“Ohanko’s spell kept her from harming others. She was killed by her own crafting.”

“I still do not—”

“You will agree to this,” Namid said, his voice like ice grinding against stone, “or I will step outside of the law and wipe you from this earth right now.”

I hoped that Saorla would refuse and force the runemyste to act. But I think she sensed that she’d pushed him as far she could. “Very well,” she said. Her eyes found mine. “Beware, Justis Fearsson. I am not finished with you.”

“Did I not make the conditions of this bargain clear?” Namid demanded.

“Of course you did, Namid’skemu. I am merely telling young Fearsson what he knows already to be true.” She looked at me sidelong once more.
You still owe me a boon
, she whispered in my mind. Out loud she said, “We shall meet again.”

Her disappearance was sudden enough to startle me. It took me a moment to realize that Witcombe was gone, too. The bodies of Hain and Patty Hesslan-Fine remained, as did Hacker, the werecat, and the others—dead and alive—Saorla had brought with her. I was vaguely aware of movement off to the side. Men were leading others to a pair of SUVs. That should have meant something to me, but my attention was drawn back to the watery figure before me. He was speaking to the woman—to Kona.

“They need a place to sleep,” he said.

“I know. Justis can go back home now. I’ll take him there myself. I’ll take both of them.”

“It is well. You have my thanks.”

After that I lost track of the conversation and just about everything else. I remember gazing at the moon from the desert, and later through a car window. I think Kona said stuff to me, and I suppose I tried to answer, but I remember nothing of what we talked about. I do remember, though, that my father rode with us, and that he slept.

I awoke the next morning feeling hungover, my thoughts clearer than they had been, but far from crystal. The door to my second bedroom was closed, which it never is. I was about to open it when I remembered that my dad was here with me, that his trailer had been knocked over, and that Patty Hesslan-Fine was dead. I left the door shut and dragged myself into the kitchen to fix some coffee.

I wanted to go see Billie—now that I had remembered my dad, I was recalling lots of other stuff as well—but I didn’t want my father waking up alone in a strange house. He’d been in my place before, but it had been a while, and his memory wasn’t always so good, particularly in the middle of the phasing.

While I was waiting for him to wake up, Kona called and asked to come by. She and Kevin showed up at my door a short time later, badges in hand.

“I take it this isn’t a social visit,” I said, eyeing them both.

“’Fraid not,” Kona said. “We need a statement from you about Heather’s murder, about your friend Martell, and about what happened last night to Hesslan-Fine and Palmer Hain.”

“All right.” I stood aside and waved them into the house.

Kona went right in, but Kevin faltered, his eyes lowered. “I think I owe you an apology.”

“No, you really don’t. You’re new to this magic thing, and this week you got thrown into the deep end without water wings or anything.” I grinned, and so did he. “You’ve handled it well,” I said, “and I appreciate it.”

The three of us talked for the better part of an hour. Kona and Kevin had a lot of questions, and I answered them as best I could, trying to reduce magical occurrences to explanations that wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows among those who read their report. Eventually I heard my father stir in the back room and call out, “Justis?”

I excused myself and went back to see how he was doing. When I opened the door, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, his hair tousled, his T-shirt wrinkled.

“My place was destroyed, wasn’t it?” he said as I walked to the bed and sat beside him.

“I think we can repair it, but yeah, it’s in pretty bad shape.”

“And I suppose everything else I think happened last night really did happen.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“I remember a coyote killing someone and Elliott Hesslan’s daughter lighting herself on fire.”

“That all happened.”

“Damn.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “You know, I do fine with the phasings on my own. If that’s your idea of a good time, you can count me out next month.”

I laughed, though only for a few seconds. “How are you feeling?”

“Not too bad, considering. Hungry. You got any food?”

“Yeah. Kona and her partner are in the living room. They needed a statement on what happened last night.”