Shadowspell (27 page)

I was in what could only be described as an altered state, and everything I did, I did from pure instinct.

I began to hum under my breath, just tuneless noise at first, but my fury searched out the angriest song I knew, and the hum turned into “O Fortuna” from
Carmina Burana
. Fred was dragging the bottom of my sweater up, but I ignored him, my entire being focused on the song I was humming so quietly no one could hear.

I felt the first prickle of magic almost immediately. I had no idea what I was going to do with it, seeing as I’d still never actually accomplished anything remotely like a spell before, but I had nothing better to try.

My utter lack of response to his groping had made Fred complacent, sure that I was completely beaten down and helpless. I could tell by the hard lump that swelled behind his zipper just how much he liked helpless.

Maybe I really was helpless. Maybe I
still
couldn’t get the magic to do anything useful. But I wasn’t going to lose everything without putting up one hell of a fight. The magic was still gathering, but I knew I could call more, and the more I called, the more powerful the hypothetical spell I could cast. Which meant I had to find a way to stall before Fred got around to the main event.

It was hard to hum and fight at the same time, but all those lessons with Keane had created a lot of muscle memory, the kind that worked with a minimum of conscious thought. Since Fred had gotten careless enough to leave me a little room to move, I managed to stomp down on his instep.

He had me pinned firmly enough that I couldn’t get a whole lot of leverage on the stomp. I think it surprised him more than hurt him, but it accomplished its purpose, interrupting his groping and slowing him down. The magic was still building, and I hoped like hell Grace was far enough away that she couldn’t sense it, or she’d be sure to destroy my last chance.

I might not have hurt Fred very much, but apparently he didn’t appreciate me stomping on his foot. He retaliated with a backhand that made my head spin, even though he hadn’t been able to get a whole lot of leverage, either, not while keeping me pinned.

Blood filled my mouth, and my humming screeched to a halt. The magic started to recede, and I desperately reached out for it, the song rising once again in my throat. Fred was giving me a funny look, which probably meant I was now humming loud enough for him to hear. He must have thought my elevator wasn’t going to the top floor anymore, but that didn’t lessen his eagerness to rape me. His hand dropped to my jeans, and he began fumbling with the button.

Panic tried to seize hold of me, but I fought it off with all my might. If I allowed the panic to take hold, I was doomed, and so was Ethan. We probably were anyway, but I was determined to take that one, desperate last shot.

The magic was everywhere now, so thick in the air I could hardly breathe. Fred was so eager to get down to business he was being clumsy about opening my jeans. As long as the intensity of the magic kept growing, I kept humming, determined not to unleash it until the last possible moment, until I’d drawn every scrap of it I could to me.

The zipper on my jeans rasped down, and I realized I was almost out of time. The magic was so strong now I didn’t think I could breathe well enough to keep humming, and I was starting to feel lightheaded with it.

Fred was my most immediate threat, but he wasn’t the one I needed to take out, at least not first. I was probably only going to have one shot—assuming I had anything like a shot at all—and there was only one person whom I wanted to absorb that blast of fury.

Fred was trying to tug my jeans down when I unleashed all the magic I’d gathered to me, sending it at Grace with an incoherent cry of fury, a screaming high note that would have shattered glasses if there were any around.

My scream made everyone pause for a moment. Even Fred forgot his efforts to get my jeans down, gaping at me.

The blast of magic slammed into Grace, the force of it making her take a step back. Her eyes widened in alarm and shock. The light spell she’d cast fizzled out, leaving the tunnel lit only by Ethan’s dropped torch.

I wanted Grace to poof out of existence, to melt into a puddle of goo, or to go up in flames. Some sign that my magic had hurt her, would destroy her even if in the end I couldn’t save myself or Ethan. But other than that one step backward and the death of the light spell, nothing happened.

Grace shook her head and took a step forward so that she was standing beside her henchman and Ethan once more. There was a hint of worry in her eyes, but there seemed to be nothing wrong with her, and she smiled her evil smile again.

I closed my eyes in despair. I’d failed.

chapter twenty-five

Fred turned his attention back to me, and I was so shattered by the failure of my spell that I barely had the will to struggle. What was the point anymore? Struggling would only prolong the inevitable. However, I’m one of the most stubborn people I know, and even though my heart wasn’t in it, I still put up a fight, enough to get Fred cursing. I opened my eyes just in time to see him draw back his fist to hit me.

“Now!” a deep, familiar voice shouted, the sound echoing so much it was hard to tell where it was coming from.

Everyone was startled by the sound and started looking around wildly, trying to find the source of the voice. Grace immediately started chanting something, which I figured was the start of one of her nasty offensive spells.

But one person apparently
wasn’t
startled by the voice. Ethan took advantage of his captor’s momentary distraction to surge to his feet and throw the bastard off. In a moment of déjà vu, I saw the glint of silver in his hand, and realized that knife of his had appeared out of nowhere again.

Grace turned to him, and I screamed out a warning. I’d seen what Grace’s magic could do, seen it completely crush a car. But although Grace was now shouting the words of her spell, nothing seemed to be happening, and Ethan plowed into her. His knife found a space between her ribs, and he shoved it in all the way to the hilt.

That was the last of Ethan’s strength, and he let go of the knife, falling limply to the floor. Grace stood there in shock, staring at the knife that now protruded from her chest. Her hand shook as she reached out to grasp the hilt and pull it out. She cried out in pain as she pulled, and when the knife was all the way out, blood poured from the wound.

A cloaked and hooded figure materialized out of the darkness only a few feet from me and Fred. Fred decided that the new arrival was more of a threat than I was, so he let me go and charged forward with a battle cry that might have been intimidating, if his target were capable of being intimidated. Fred’s hand reached for the gun tucked into the back of his pants.

“No!” Grace yelled, but even if Fred heard her, he ignored her, firing off a muffled shot that hit Arawn in the head and momentarily rocked him back. But the Erlking had survived having his head chopped off, and the bullet didn’t seem to bother him much. He let his hood slide down so Fred could see his unmarred face.

Either Fred wasn’t very bright, or he was just completely desperate, because even once he saw that his bullet had failed to hurt the Erlking, much less kill him, he still kept firing. Until the Erlking’s sword skewered him right through the chest, that is. The light went out in Fred’s eyes, and the gun fell from his limp fingers. The Erlking calmly put his hand on the dead man’s shoulder and yanked his bloody blade free.

Grace’s other accomplice had much more sense than Fred, and started running like hell, quickly disappearing into the darkness. I was betting he had a flashlight on him, but he didn’t turn it on. Better to run blindly than to light a beacon, I supposed.

“He won’t get far,” Arawn said as Fred’s body fell in a heap at his feet. “The Hunt is waiting for him.”

Grace had sunk to her knees, her face ashen as blood continued to flow from the knife wound. She was pressing on the wound with both hands, but it seemed to have little effect. Ethan dragged himself away from her. He was obviously still weak and in pain, but he was also obviously in better shape than Grace. Even the exertion of fighting his way to his feet and stabbing Grace hadn’t started his wound bleeding again.

Either Ethan had hit a more vital spot, or my spell had had more effect on Grace than I’d thought. I remembered her light spell going out, and remembered her failed attempt to cast something at Ethan before he’d stabbed her.

Arawn kicked Fred’s body out of his way and advanced on Grace, who forgot about trying to stanch the blood and held her hands out in a warding gesture.

“No!” she begged, but Arawn kept coming.

I wondered what was going on. Arawn had been able to kill Fred because Fred attacked him, but Grace was just sitting there, helpless and bleeding. I thought maybe he was trying to trick her into attacking him in self-defense—like he’d tricked Ethan—but frankly, she didn’t seem to be in any shape to attack even if she fell for it.

“Please,” Grace tried again, but this time, to my shock, blood dripped from her mouth, and she began to make a noise somewhere between a cough and a choke. It should have taken more than a small stab wound, no matter how well placed, to kill one of the Sidhe, even if my spell had taken her healing magic offline. So why did it look like she’d taken a mortal wound?

The Erlking’s sword whistled through the air, moving blindingly fast. It sliced clean through Grace’s neck without even slowing down.

I caught only the briefest glimpse of what happened, because the Erlking quickly stepped between me and her, his cloak completely blocking my view. But that brief glimpse was more than enough to haunt my nightmares for years to come. It might have been a quick death, but it sure as hell wasn’t a pretty one. Even Ethan’s face turned green at the sight.

Blood still dripping from his blade, the Erlking turned to face me. “Are you all right?” he asked, and the question was so absurd it startled a nearly hysterical laugh out of me.

“Oh, sure, just peachy,” I said between giggles. “I was just almost raped, and I watched you stab one guy and behead my aunt, oh, and I got knocked around a bit, but other than that, I’m having a blast.” I was still laughing, but there were tears on my face, and I was having trouble getting a full breath into my lungs. Okay, so maybe that sound coming out of me was more like sobs than laughter.

It was hard to read the Erlking’s face in the flickering, erratic light of the downed torch. His eyes were hidden in shadow, but I felt the pressure of their gaze on me even as he pulled a rag from somewhere under his cloak and started wiping the blood from the blade.

“I am sorry I could not get here sooner to spare you some of what you’ve been through,” he said, sounding like he meant it.

The calmness of his voice and his manner took a bit of the edge off my hysteria, though now that it was over, I started to shake all over.

“How did you get here at all?” I asked.

It was too dark to tell for sure, but I think he smiled. “As Ethan has told you by now, he is still bound to me even if he is no longer bound to my Hunt. When he was hurt, I sensed it. Then I used our bond to find him.”

“And communicate with him,” I said, because I remembered the Erlking shouting “Now,” which had obviously been a signal to Ethan—one Ethan was expecting.

Arawn nodded. “And communicate.”

“But how could you kill Grace? She’s a citizen of Avalon, and you’re not allowed to kill anyone in Avalon unless they attack you.”

“There is one other condition that will allow me to kill in Avalon,” he said.

Of course there was. Both he and Grace had mentioned that he was hunting her, and my dad had said he was allowed to pursue his quarry into Avalon. I’d assumed the Erlking had come to Avalon in pursuit of the Fae I’d seen him kill the first day he’d come, but now I figured the Fae had been a bonus and Grace his main quarry.

Ethan forced himself up into a sitting position with a grunt of pain. Arawn dismissed me for the moment and went to kneel beside his former Huntsman. I don’t know for certain if it was on purpose, but he managed to position himself in such a way that his shadow hid Grace’s decapitated body from my vision.

“Lie down,” the Erlking ordered Ethan, and though I saw the spark of rebellion in Ethan’s eyes, he obeyed. I guessed he didn’t have any choice.

The Erlking put his hand over Ethan’s wound, then pressed down hard. Ethan screamed in pain, and I tried to scramble to my feet. What I could possibly do to help Ethan against the Erlking was anyone’s guess. But after that scream, Ethan’s body went completely limp.

For one terrible minute, I thought he was dead. Then the Erlking lifted the hand he’d laid on Ethan’s chest, holding something between his thumb and index finger. It was the bullet.

“It had to come out before he could heal properly,” he said.

I steadied myself with a hand against the wall. “You could have just taken him to a healer. A healer could have fixed him up without hurting him.”

He nodded. “Even so. And in the intervening time, he’d have been in constant pain. Better to have it over with quickly, don’t you think?”

I wanted to disagree with him, but that would make me a hypocrite. After all, I’d decided to let Keane heal my hand when I’d hurt it for just that reason.

Dropping the bullet, Arawn stood up, the shadows and his black cloak making him seem even larger than he really was. “I take it you fully understand the terms of our bargain now.”

“Yeah,” I said weakly. I could have lied, but Ethan had heard Grace’s big revelation, and it was pretty obvious now that anything Ethan knew, the Erlking knew.

I closed my eyes to stop the tears that wanted to spill out. I had known from the moment he’d made the offer that Arawn was angling for more than sex, that giving him my virginity would have some kind of unpleasant consequences. So why the hell did it hurt my feelings to discover those consequences would have included my death? He was the bad guy, a cold-blooded, cold-hearted killer. Yeah, he’d just saved my life, but he’d done it entirely for his own purposes. I couldn’t put out if I was dead. So it should have come as no surprise that he was planning to use and kill me, just like Grace had planned to.