A thought about calling Vlad for help echoed through Darius’s troubled mind.
“Don’t call Vlad.” I wiped my face. “Whatever you do, don’t call that guy. I don’t need any more turds in my litterbox.”
“That’s graphic,” Dizzy mumbled.
“She has a right to be graphic.” Callie backed away from the others. “She’s stuck in midair, floating in rocks and dirt, and jeopardized by a demon. I can’t believe every other word out of her mouth isn’t a curse word.” There was something in her hand, but I couldn’t get a good look at it.
“When you practiced your new power, what circumvented it?” Darius asked, pacing beside the invisible barrier that apparently I was keeping enacted.
Callie threw a casing. It flashed green before fizzling away. “Dang it,” she mumbled. “Her ability to unweave spells is still working.”
“I’ve never had to circumvent it.” I wiped my face again, getting rid of the moisture. My sudden sweating problem wasn’t from exerting this power. The demon had given me plenty. Too much. No, it was from the increasing difficulty of ignoring my fear. I was stalling. The hovering, the telekinesis, the wall—they were keeping me stagnant, but they were not stopping the icy, corrosive power from spreading. Its progress had slowed, but it kept soaking up my insides, turning me cold.
“Explain it to me,” Darius said in a confident, commanding voice. A thought trailed away, unvoiced. Mon ange.
My angel. That was sweet.
I took a deep breath. “Okay.” I walked him through the various phases, from stumbling upon the new well of power, to actively trying to use it, to the way the two powers had mixed like ink, and finally to the confrontation with the demon-mage and then the demon itself.
“The demon is calling forth this other side of your power,” Callie said. “Like when your mother worked to bring it out in you with your training, they are bringing it to the surface naturally. I did not realize there were two halves to the whole.”
“Surprise.” I moved my hands and feet like a puppet.
She is on a thin rope, Dizzy thought.
He had that right.
Callie dug into her bag. “Stand back, everyone. This spell might explode.”
“Wait.” Darius held his hand out, studying me. “Force the fire, Reagan,” he said in a soft, urgent voice. “Force the fire. Force it to take over. Get me through this barrier and I will help you.”
“How are you going to help her?” Callie asked.
“Blood,” Darius said, the possessiveness back ten-fold. “It helped after she killed the other demon. It has to help this time as well. I will not lose her to the underworld. She is bringing back my humanity—I will not let it take hers.”
“Well, that is unexpected,” Dizzy deadpanned. “But unless you can get her down first, you won’t be able to get blood into her.”
“Force the fire,” Darius urged me.
Yes, that was what I needed to do. Or just force this icy power down. But that meant dunking myself back into the sludge. I was afraid of it. Afraid of losing myself, like Darius had said.
Heat pricked behind my eyes, threatening tears. I’d never been this afraid in my whole life. This wasn’t death. It was a fate worse than death. Until now, I’d thought only prison qualified for that category. The prospect of losing my humanity was so much worse. Becoming a monster.
I stared directly at Darius. “Kill me if it takes over, okay? Don’t try to save me. Kill me.”
His thoughts were in French this time, and his hard face gave nothing away.
“Promise me,” I pushed.
“No. Force the fire, mon ange. Force the fire.”
“Can’t you do what I say for once?” I took a deep breath, struggling for control of my emotions. Then I reconnected with my power, feeling that dark, cold ice spreading within me. I had very little time.
“Force the fire.” His voice wound around me, urging me to obey. I soaked it in, taking courage from his confidence. “Sometimes the only way out is to go through. You can do it.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and searched for the spark. The heat that felt so good when it rolled over my skin.
Darius repeated himself, his voice like that of a commander inspiring valor and true grit in his men before they marched unto the breach.
I could do this. Both powers were my birthright. Both could be controlled, I just had to figure out how to master this new one, and later, how to manage both of them in tandem.
Gritting my teeth, I tapped into the cold power, feeling every rock and speck of dirt circling me. Hearing the excitement of the neighbor’s thoughts, and the awe in Callie and Dizzy. But most importantly, I felt Darius’s raw, unyielding belief that I could do this. That I was more powerful than him, than even Vlad, and if anyone could handle a trivial matter such as a demon overthrowing one’s person, it was me.
Sometimes the only way out was to go through.
Here goes nothing.
I embodied the full force of the icy power, felt it sucking me under and turning everything black. My thoughts rolled and my breath left me. I reveled in the dark majesty of the power thrumming within my veins.
A stray thought wound through my glory.
Make her proud.
Her.
Callie meant my mother.
Emotion surged up in me. And with it, fire.
My mother had always called me her flame. She’d coaxed it out of me. She’d helped me embody it.
Now she would save my life with it.
I yanked it up and wrapped it around the horrible coldness, defusing the edges. Chopping off the seeking arms. I pushed the cold down and packed it into a tight ball, the effect lowering me in the sky, making it harder for me to keep the rocks and dirt up.
But I did.
Balls of flame sprang to life, various colors, various sizes, moving through the debris around me, making the guy hiding in the bushes do a fist pump. I rose back up and drifted forward, feeling all that horrible blackness inside me surrounded by bright light. Ice wrapped in heat.
Fire rolled along my arms and legs, but the cold stayed like a cap on my head. I’d probably still lose my eyebrows, unfortunately. You couldn’t have everything.
The sweet air rushed back into my lungs. My fingers tingled with pins and needles, coming back to life. My heart fluttered, emotion surging back in.
Finally, I pushed it all back down, the fire and ice together, a knot in my stomach now, but the start of something. I’d fuse them together one day.
My feet bumped the ground and the debris in the air slowly fell. The fire winked out. The man in the bushes ran like hell.
“Someone should help him forget,” I said, glancing at his retreating figure. “He was too excited for his own good.”
I felt the others draw near me, but no one spoke. When I turned to them, Callie and Dizzy had their eyebrows up, as if they’d just asked a question.