Treasures, Demons, and Other Black Magic (32 page)

I stepped forward, out from the shelter of the trees. I twirled my katana — completely unnecessarily — to loosen my wrist. Then I straightened my arm and pointed the blade toward my sister.

“Sienna!” I screamed. My voice knifed across the sand.

Sienna opened her black eyes, like two yawning chasms carved into her face. Then she smiled.

A fifteen-foot black-crested wave crashed onto the beach. It receded, but left a horned demon in its wake. Standing six feet at the shoulder, it lifted its snubbed snout in the air, opened its blood-red eyes, and bared its fanged teeth in our direction.

Another wave crashed in, depositing a second demon beside the first.

“Mutt,” McGrowly spat behind me. The demons did look reminiscent of mastiffs. You know, if mastiffs were covered in gray scales and weighed about … I don’t know … five hundred pounds each.

“No one likes a mutt.” The words were mangled by McGrowly’s fangs, but the shapeshifters all around us understood him perfectly. They growled in unified agreement.

Another wave brought another demon mutt, then another and another. They shook and stretched their boney backs.

“Come and get me,” Sienna cried. She was so freaking typical, like all the freaking time.

I curled my other hand under and around the bottom of my sword hilt, rotating my body into an offensive stance.

The witch magic snapped fully into place in front of me.

I took a deep breath, settling into my stance as I exhaled. I tasted the moment. It tasted of death.

“Now,” Kett whispered.

My muscles contracted, propelling my body forward. The soft sand shifted underneath my feet, but it didn’t shake me. I flew toward my destiny, lifting my sword up over my head as I pivoted into a spinning leap to take the head off the first demon that jumped at me, snarling.

Its blood splattered my arms and throat even as it dissolved into ash … no, sand. I could feel the grit against my skin and taste it on my lips. I was aware that I was screaming — the pain of it tearing at my throat — as I flipped my katana up over my opposite shoulder, lunged, and took off the head of the next demon that leaped at me.

I was still running, carving my way toward Sienna. The demons were nothing but an obstacle to cut through. Sienna was the goal. My sword would be at her neck next.

∞

The demon horde stopped us halfway across the beach. I was only aware of the demons in front of me, and Desmond and Kett beside me. If I looked at them too closely, those monsters at my side were even more terrifying than the demons. McGrowly would reach out, snatch a demon, and rip its head off. This wasn’t a clean, simple process. He was coated in demon blood that burned its way through his clothing and seared his skin. If he noticed, it didn’t slow him down.

Kett flitted in and out of my peripheral vision as a seemingly demonic version of himself — though not quite the mess of chaos that had freed itself from Blackwell’s spell in Scotland. This incarnation was graceful and bestowed with deadly claws. Instead of ripping off heads, he sliced them off. Yes, with his bare hands.

The space between Sienna and me was filling with more and more demons impeding my ability to swing my sword and cleanly deliver killing blows. I could see a dozen in front of me alone, with more and more rolling out of the surf behind. How many people had Sienna killed? Was each demon a reanimation of those souls? I pushed this traumatizing thought out of my mind and pressed forward, hoping I was freeing their spirits as I vanquished each demon before me.

The shapeshifters were getting hit hard around us. The witches’ spell offered some protection, but it wasn’t entirely demon proof. Sienna wasn’t able to cast any extra magic through it, though. I’d felt at least three fireblood spells hit the shield and fizzle. So that was a good thing.

I could still feel Kandy, Audrey, and Lara near me, but the witches’ shield spell wasn’t wide enough to block the demons to our left and right.

I tried to ignore the screaming. I tried to ignore the faltering witch magic. I just swung my sword as I inched forward.

“Jade!” Kett yelled.

I had missed the second demon climbing over the shoulder of the one I was currently facing. This demon sprung at me, too close for me to get my sword up and between us. I tumbled backward, knocking Kandy and Audrey aside where both were wrestling their own demons — literally.

The first demon gleefully leaped over the second. For a brief moment — with me pinned underneath them — they tussled over who was going to rip my throat out first. Unable to free my sword, I managed to pull my jade knife out and jammed it into the eye socket of the first demon, just as the second took a swipe and caught my neck with its claws.

I nearly blacked out from the pain. My blood spurted all over the second demon. But instead of lapping it up, it shrieked and reeled back. This shifting of its weight pressed the first demon farther down onto my jade knife. The creature dissolved into sand that flowed around me, mixing with the blood still pumping from whatever artery had been severed in my throat.

I tried to roll to my feet but didn’t make it up. The second demon was still scrambling back from me as others closed in to take its place, ready to finish me off.

Kett stepped in front of me and took the head off the second demon. Then he turned and smiled at me. “I guess that answers that question.” I had no freaking idea what he was talking about. His smile faded as my vision blurred. “Jade?”

Everything went momentarily black. Note to self: Getting my throat gouged out was not a good idea.

I came to and found Kett and Desmond standing over me. I sat up and shakily retrieved my sword. It was covered in blood and sand. That seemed so disrespectful.

I left magic building up behind me …

The necromancers …

“Duck,” I tried to scream, but it came out as a gurgled whisper. I’d stopped bleeding but my throat was still healing.

The necromancers unleashed their spell. It flew across the sand. It flew toward us. It flew toward Kett. Necromancy and vampires didn’t mix.

“Duck,” I screamed for real as I surged to my feet.

Kett flattened himself to the sand in front of me. The necromancers’ spell blew through and around me. And just for a flash, I could taste sugared violets.

“Rusty …” I whispered.

The spell hit the churning well of energy that had built up above Sienna — the power source I couldn’t feel or taste. My sister shrieked and collapsed to her knees.

The demon before me shook its head as if shaking off an invisible leash. Sienna had momentarily lost her hold on the horde.

Another flash of magic flew in from behind — the witches. This spell also blew by me, tasting of fresh-cut grass, lilac, and strawberries. It ignited inches in front of me, burning through every demon in my path.

Before me, the witches’ shield collapsed, but I was already moving. I sheathed my sword and gripped my jade knife. The sand of the disintegrated demons hung suspended all around me … or maybe I was just moving so fast it hadn’t fallen to the ground yet.

I felt my mother fall, her magic so dim I could barely sense it. This was the same spell she’d used against the demon in the Sea Lion Caves. Then, it had been more powerful than I had ever thought her capable of. Now, backed by a half-coven of witches, it was astonishing. And so filled with magic it could be deadly for the caster. I willed myself forward despite the terrified feeling that I might be losing her.

The skinwalkers, who’d been waiting behind the witches, leaped into battle.

The demons broke through the shapeshifter defensive line.

More screams, more dying.

I kept moving forward.

I hit the surf. I leaped over the next wave — and there was no demon within this one. The necromancers had stopped the generation of new demons by freeing the souls, or energy, that had been fueling Sienna’s summoning, but not the already risen horde. At least a dozen demons remained on the beach behind me.

I had left everyone else behind me. I leaped up on the rock. Sienna was still on her knees. She looked up and smiled as I thrust my knife forward into the ward that shielded her from magic.

From magic, but not me.

Except the jade knife met no resistance. Off-balanced by this, I fell forward, stumbling to kneel before Sienna.

She’d opened the protection circle, just for that single breath. It snapped closed behind me.

And I faltered.
 

Sienna’s magic was too powerful. It was fully unleashed within the circle. It owned the circle. It rejected me, momentarily scrambling my senses.

Then I became aware of a dark burning deep within my gut — and of the seething, terrible magic searing into me.

I looked down. Sienna had stabbed me in the stomach with the sacrificial knife as I fell. A knife that I had created to cut through magic, a knife capable of killing a vampire.

“That’s the third freaking time,” I muttered. I could taste blood in my mouth.

Sienna laughed. “Ah, Jade.” She reached out to stroke my hair. Her hand came away bloody, and she looked for a moment like she was contemplating licking it.

“I wouldn’t do that,” I murmured. I could feel my magic fighting the power of the knife — and claiming it … because it was already my own creation. “The demon didn’t like it much.”

Sienna giggled. “No matter. There are always other ways.”

Then she kissed me. Hand cupping my head, knife twisting into my gut, she kissed me.

I screamed. And screamed.

She was pulling my magic out — somehow dragging it from me through my lips.

I was dimly aware of more screaming outside the circle, followed by a crack of magic as Kett or Desmond tried to break through Sienna’s wards.

But Sienna — who had killed and bound the magic of so many Adepts — was too powerful.

I slumped sideways and she guided me back onto the rocks, still kissing me, still siphoning my magic.

Now she’d be unstoppable. The horde would kill most of the Adepts arrayed against her, and then she’d step out of the circle and kill the rest. With my magic.
 

My friends, my family … all dead, just like I’d seen in Chi Wen’s vision.

Except … this wasn’t the cave. And that wasn’t my destiny.

My mouth, clamped shut against Sienna’s assault, was filled with blood.

I spat this mouthful into Sienna’s face.

She screamed and reared backward. As it had been with the demon before her, the magic in my blood was incompatible with Sienna’s black magic — or maybe it was that my dragon magic was the antithesis of demon or dark magic — I didn’t know. But it distracted Sienna for just a moment.

Still barely able to move, I wrapped my hand around the sacrificial knife that was poisoning me with its blood magic and yanked it from my belly. The toxic magic was already in my system, slowing me as I rolled to my side to avoid a spell Sienna half-heartedly tossed at me. This spell — an ice-based variation of her fireblood spell — hit my shoulder and actually helped steady me rather than freezing me in place.

“What have you done?” Sienna shrieked, desperately wiping my blood from her face. But the damage was already spreading. Her veins — filled with black magic — had burst open. These oozing wounds stank of the dark putrescence of that magic.

I wrapped my hand around the hilt of my sword over my shoulder. Sienna hadn’t tried to disarm me — she learned from her mistakes, knowing not to touch anything I might have claimed, such as my jade knife, which had burned her so badly in the past.

I unsheathed my katana with Chi Wen’s vision focused in my mind. I remembered Sienna sprawled dead on the altar in the cave, but with her deadly, intoxicating magic still alive.

“It can’t be destroyed,” I whispered.

I swung the sword around, its tip striking sparks of magic wherever it grazed the inner edge of Sienna’s protection circle.

Sienna screamed and flung up her hands as I brought the sword to her neck.

But I didn’t cut off her head.

No, I reached around her, over her shoulder, and grasped the blade exactly as I shouldn’t. The sword sliced into my hand, my blood coating its razor-sharp edge.

Sienna wrapped her hands around my neck and tried to strangle me. Black dots immediately appeared before my eyes — my throat was still wounded from the demon’s claws.

With the last of my strength, I bent the unbendable blade around Sienna’s neck — smoothing the metal with my magic when it wanted to crack and break — until it encircled her shoulders.

I couldn’t breathe. Sienna’s nails dug into my skin. Her blacked-out eyes were fierce. She was screaming with rage.

Then, remembering the blade’s purpose and how the magic of Blackwell’s circlet worked, I sucked all the magic out of Sienna and into the sword.

Well, it wasn’t quite that easy.

At first, her screams turned from rage to pain. She let go of my neck and brought her hands up to the blade in an attempt to push it off over her head. She severely sliced her hands doing so, which only served to intensify the magic I was trying to work. My blood and her blood mingled. I smoothed this combined magic out over the entire sword, and pulled and pulled and pulled all of Sienna’s magic after it.

I fell to my knees, unable to support myself and work such a terrible alchemy.

And it was terrible. It was a terrible, terrible thing to do to another person. A fate worse than death for any Adept.

The veins on Sienna’s face split wider as the magic drained out of her.

She stopped screaming.

Her eyes cleared and returned to their normal cappuccino brown. “What have you done?” she whispered through cracked, black-bleeding lips.

I kept pulling, even as I felt my own magic faltering … I guess even I had limits.

The black magic drained from Sienna’s veins. Her face began to heal.

“Stop, Jade … Jade …” she begged.

I didn’t stop. I knew I couldn’t stop. I went beyond the blood magic, beyond the black magic. I took her witch magic — the familiar taste of it made me weep. I took the binding powers, because if I didn’t, the cycle would just start again.