Love Charms (133 page)

Kristoff came to me, wrapping a hand
around my  wrist. “Now we seal the room with blood.” He pulled me to my feet,
and, without warning, ran a sharp knife along the soft flesh of my forearm. Given
the way I was tied up, I was powerless to stop him.

I jumped with a scream, moving to run
away, but he put a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Don’t waste the blood or I’ll
have to cut you again.”

I froze as he took a small silver bowl
from his pocket and held it to my wound, allowing the blood to drip into it.
“Usually I blood the circle myself, but tonight we’ll use yours.” He squeezed
my forearm in a milking motion, forcing more blood down my arm to the bowl.

“You’ll probably be a bit lightheaded
from the loss. Make sure you eat after we’re done here tonight.”

My stomach turned at the mention of food.
I was being bled like a pig and about to witness a murder, I doubted I would
have much of an appetite later.

“There, that should do it.”  He held the
bowl up inspecting its contents. “We’re ready to begin then.

Kristoff walked to the center of the
room, where it was darkest. With a silent command of his will, which I felt as
an electrical charge in the air, the crystals flared bright as stage lights,
illuminating every crack and crevice. And Kristoff, a triumphant smile on his
face, stood next to an unmoving Vera lying on a steel surgical table.

I gasped and tugged at the bonds still
holding my hands behind my back. “No.”

“Yes,” Kristoff said as he walked in a slow,
wide circle around Vera, marking his path with my blood.

“But I did everything you asked me to.”

“Who says my decision has anything to do
with you?” Kristoff paused to frown at me. “Your friend has brought this on
herself with her stubbornness. I gave her one last chance today and she
refused. I have no more time to persuade her.”

“Let me talk to her. I can convince her
to do whatever you want.”

“I’m afraid the time is past for
bargaining. I need results and I need them now. She won’t give me what I want
willingly, so I must take steps to force her to suit my needs.”

I made to move toward him, but Kristoff
held up a hand, slamming his will into mine like he had in the astral plane. I
collapsed against the wall with an audible thud. “You will not interfere. If
you do, you’ll be shocked and next in line after your friend.” He smiled.
“Sometimes, people are better off dead.”

Yeah, except we disagreed as to who. I
looked around the room for some means of escape or rescue, something, anything
to save myself and Vera. There was nothing but smooth wall and the crystals and
I knew better than to hope for the FIB to show up.

A poke on the back of my leg reminded me
I had the fork and a dagger. While the dagger had remained in the front of my
pants and beyond my reach, the fork had shifted around to the back of my hip.
If I could just move it a few more inches back, I might be able to reach it.
Slowly, inch by inch, I rubbed my hip against the wall forcing the fork closer
to my hands. The victory I felt once I had it in hand was short-lived. My arms
were still tied behind me and I doubted I would be very effective fighting
backwards.

I pulled against the rope, straining to
find some way to wiggle free. Recalling various television shows and movies I’d
seen, I decided to try to slide my arms down behind my legs and under my feet
to at least get them in front of me. It was the best idea I had and worth a
shot.

Quietly as I could, I slid down to the
floor and began to inch my hands under my hips. It was slow, hard work. A
gymnast I was not, I couldn’t even touch my ankles let alone my toes. It was
impossibly uncomfortable and difficult, but, somehow, my body figured it out
and I managed to scoot my hands down the backs of my legs until I cleared my
feet, although a burning sensation in my hamstring told me I would pay for my
contortions later.

I staggered to my feet and sawed through
the rope that bound me with the dagger. Kristoff didn’t even notice, he was
preoccupied with sorting through his tray of surgical instruments. Luckily, the
dagger was sharp enough to saw through my bonds in a few quick strokes. Once I
was free, I inched toward Kristoff, fork in one hand, dagger in the other.

The necromancer, confident that I posed
no threat, had his back to me, totally focused on his collection of sharp
murder weapons. The sound of metal on metal rang in the air as he arranged
scalpels in neat rows on the tray.

Unaware of my advance, Kristoff lectured
me. “The first thing we do is bleed the zombie dry. You’ll notice the table has
grooves and a collection bucket to catch the blood. Not only does this serve as
the means of death, but it is also used to raise a zombie from the dead.”

I couldn’t resist a quick glance at the
table as he spoke. Indeed, there were shallow gutters to catch fluids tracing
the outline of the table. The table was tilted at such an angle so as to drive
all blood to a steel bucket at the corner by Vera’s foot.

The bucket would remain empty if I had
anything to do with it. I was close enough to strike now and I raised both the
dagger and the fork, brandishing them like swords, trying to figure out what to
do with them. I felt an inappropriate urge to poke Kristoff in the butt as it
was the most available target, but that would be too much like shaking a red cape
in front of a bull; highly irritating, but not terribly effective as an
offense. The best target would probably be his neck, but not with his back to
me.

Unfortunately, while I pondered my
strategy, Vera woke up, took one look at me and said, “Sofia, what are you
doing?”

Kristoff whirled around, the surprise on
his face quickly giving way to a suave calm. He looked at me with arched
eyebrows. “You found a way around the collar. Impressive.”

I didn’t wait for him to finish, knowing
I was seconds away from being shoved back to the wall. I charged forward, fork
in front of me since it had a longer reach, and threw my entire body into the
movement. I got lucky and hit him in the stomach. The fork punctured his
clothes and the tissue underneath, which resisted at first, but then gave way
with surprising ease.

Kristoff grunted and doubled over,
barreling into me so hard I dropped the dagger.  I kept moving though, knowing
a fork in the stomach would be nothing more than a superficial wound at best.
Thinking quickly, I grabbed the bucket off its hook and banged Kristoff over
the head. He staggered, hands around the fork handle and looked up at me with a
mixture of fear and shock.

“Mark! Someone! Get in here,” he yelled,
scuttling away from me, simultaneously pulling the fork out of his stomach and
throwing it away from him, with an angry glare in my direction.

I grabbed a scalpel off the surgical tray
and widened my stance, bucket still swinging from my other hand. We circled
each other warily, but before I could lunge at him, he slammed his will into
me.

“Stop.” A wall of energy made it
impossible to do anything else. I went still.

“Drop the scalpel.”

The scalpel clattered to the floor.

“Don’t move.”  Kristoff’s will clamped
down on me until I had to fight to breathe.

 Mark came into the room. “What’s going
on?” He looked from me to Kristoff.

Kristoff sighed, irritated. “You’re too
late. It’s over. Your girlfriend is fighting the inevitable, but stay. Watch my
back and watch Sofia learn that crossing me is very expensive.” Kristoff looked
at me with a broad smile.

Unable to move, I couldn’t respond, but I
was thinking ‘fuck you’ very loudly. I’d thought getting rid of the collar
would restore my free will, but Kristoff had not only power, but the experience
to ram it into me until I was his to do with as he pleased.

“Put the bucket back and go stand next to
your friend.”

Grudgingly, I marched, stiff as a robot,
to return the bucket to its hook and then moved until I was next to Vera. Her
eyes fluttered open for a brief second and looked at me with bleary recognition
before snapping shut again. She wasn’t tied up, and if she would just wake up,
we might have a shot, but Kristoff’s control, more effective than a gag, didn’t
let me call her name.

Kristoff came up behind me and with one
quick yank on the collar, cut off my air supply. “Your collar doesn’t rely on
magic alone, or did you forget?”

I swallowed, fighting for air. I had
forgotten about the mechanical features of the collar and I was paying for it
now.

With his other hand, Kristoff played with
my hair, twining it around his finger as he whispered, “And lucky for me, I
have my own way of forcing compliance. I was just going to let you watch, but I
think you’ve earned a more active role, don’t you?” He gave a harsh laugh and
released his hold on the collar. “Put the scalpel against her throat.”

My hand moved before I could even think
of resisting. Sweat poured down my face, dripping off my nose as I put forth
everything I had to pull back, but it didn’t work. If something didn’t happen
soon, I was about to murder my only friend. Shit. Tears joined the sweat.

Kristoff put his hand over mine, cold
fingers delicately directing my hand to the hollow of Vera’s neck. “You cut
here, as deep as you can, and then slice over to the other side.” He moved my
hand to demonstrate applying the barest of pressure, but even so, the blade was
so sharp a thin line of blood sprang forth as we went.

“The blood will come out fast at first,
you might get sprayed. I love that part.” I couldn’t shield myself from feeling
exactly how much he liked getting sprayed with hot blood. A shudder tried to
work its way through my body, but didn’t make it past Kristoff’s control.

Kristoff continued to talk about the
mechanics of bleeding Vera dry, but I tuned him out, preferring to focus my
attention on finding a way to break his hold on me. Desperate, I marshaled what
power I could, and, in a flash of inspiration, pulled on the energy from the
crystals. I had been trying to fight Kristoff physically when maybe I really
needed to meet him on the metaphysical level. At least, that’s the theory I
came up with. If I was wrong, Vera would die.

I sucked in as much power I could, lacing
my aura with sparkling energy. When I couldn’t hold anymore ‘juice’ I tested
Kristoff’s control of me and found that I was stronger. I pushed through his
domination, using pulses of energy to shatter his focus.

He jumped as if I had hit him and then
came at me with another wave of psychic force, launching a cord of dark energy
that snaked its way toward me. I countered it with white light and couldn’t
suppress a triumphant smile when his attack bounced off of my shields.

To an outsider, the whole thing would’ve
looked like a staring contest with furrowed brows and narrowed eyes. In fact,
Mark didn’t even realize anything was wrong, but on the metaphysical plane, we
dueled each other, fast and furious, in brilliant flashes of light.

As powerful as I felt, I knew I couldn’t
fight forever. I needed to find a way to end our confrontation before I
weakened. Remembering the scalpel in my hand, I moved toward Kristoff at the
same moment he rammed through my defenses and froze me again with a single
word.

“Stop.” He smiled when I froze in place.

Remaining calm, I pulled my energy back
and strengthened my connections with the crystals, funneling more energy
inward, preparing for another strike. This time, I also paid attention to the
physical plane and tightened my grip on the scalpel, knowing I would have to
move fast.

Any doubts I had about killing him had
disappeared. It was either him or me, and I chose me. For the moment, I played
along, allowing him to direct me back over to Vera. At his command, I held the
scalpel poised over the pulse beating in her neck. It wasn’t until then that I
sent another blast of energy his way.

Behind me, he sucked in his breath at the
impact. At the same time, I whirled around and drove the scalpel deep into his
neck. The skin was thinner there than in the stomach and the scalpel was
sharper than the fork, which allowed the blade to slice through with little
resistance. I jerked the scalpel in a rough slicing motion, hoping I would hit
an artery.

Kristoff staggered and wrapped an arm
around my wrist, grappling me to the floor.  He pinned me with his knees and
somehow got a hold of the scalpel. I tensed as his arm began the downswing.

Mark intervened then, pulling Kristoff
off me. “What are you doing?” 

“Let go of me,” Kristoff snarled.

Ignoring them both, I rolled to my feet
and picked up another scalpel from the tray. I lunged past Mark, aiming again
for Kristoff’s neck again. This time Mark shoved me back so hard, I fell.

Mark scowled at me. “Stop it. You can’t
kill him yet, you don’t know how to make zombies.”

Kristoff laughed. “Is that what the game
is? I teach her my art and she turns on me? I think not.” He came at me, a
fierce look on his face and fists clenched.

I sidestepped and his first pass missed.
He whirled around and swung at me, but Mark, having grabbed the steel bucket,
smashed it into the side of his head. Kristoff stumbled, but didn’t fall.