Hundreds of candles glowed around the floor, illuminating boxes stacked at the back and around the sides. In the middle of a cleared space stood three mages, all in black robes, making a triangle around a circle drawn on the floor. Beside them was a pile of gross, not human this time. An animal of some sort.
“You guys really don’t have the hang of sacrifices, you know that?” I said, inching forward slowly. I didn’t know what spells were brewing in that circle. One wrong move, and I could accidentally give the demon enough power to ride the magic home.
None of the mages glanced my way, all of them hunched in a troll-like way, completely focused on the circle and what was in it. A homeless man sat within the circle, bent and crippled in an inhuman way. The demon must have taken over that body, eating away anything that had once been human.
This demon needed to die, like all the people it had killed while on the surface.
I gritted my teeth, reining in the surge of fire that roared through me.
Don’t be hasty. You have to approach this delicately or you’ll be screwed.
Something exploded outside, shaking the warehouse. Still, the mages didn’t seem to notice.
The homeless man’s head swiveled until his gleaming eyes took me in.
“You are too late,” he rasped as Dizzy and Callie hurried through the door. They immediately slowed down, as I had done, taking in the scene. Penny came in after them, hanging back. “It is done.”
“You’re still here,” I said, feeling that aching coldness expand within me, threatening the fire. I made sure my sword was stocked full of fire magic before it was too late. “I can still break into that circle and peel you out of there.”
Darius stripped off his clothes. Penny’s eyes widened in shock, and she jerked her head away. A moment later, he molted into his monster form.
“Can we get rid of those mages, Callie?” I asked, walking around the edge of their stooped, muttering forms. They weren’t in control of themselves anymore. However the demon had done it in its weakened state, it had assumed full control.
“Not…yet. Give me a minute to look at that circle.” Callie went the other way, squinting at the chalk on the warehouse floor.
“It’s an intricate one, hon,” Dizzy said. “Magically fortified, structurally sound… It’ll take a minute to disentangle. They’ve gotten better at this. They’re masters, really. I’d love to get a picture.”
The demon’s laugh was like a swarm of locusts. “They are under my control. Any tampering with the circle will grant me a free ride home.”
Sometimes I hated being right.
“So, what, you’re just going to sit in there until hell freezes over?” I asked, stepping beside one of the mages and feeling the hum of magic in his spell. Intricate, indeed. Not like anything I’d experienced before, and certainly not like anything I’d ever seen in a book.
The cold within me pulsed, pushing at the fire. The candles around us flickered.
The demon-man’s smile widened. “Oh, but you are powerful. You are creating a flux in the fire element. Can you feel it?”
No. But I wasn’t about to admit that.
“Come with me,” the demon-man said. “Let us train you. You need a guiding hand, or your magic will destroy you. We can help.”
“I’ve been good so far.” I walked over to the next mage, feeling a different hum. Good Lord, this demon had some very interesting ways of working this circle. If I hadn’t been so scared and angry and all around put out, I’d be fascinated.
“Yes. Somehow, yes,” it rasped. “But luck always runs out.” A chunk of skin peeled away from the man’s face.
“Yuck. And here I thought the vampire monster form was gross. It’s got nothing on you, homeboy.” When I reached the last mage, I felt the slightly different hum, getting a feeling for the three corners of what the demon was orchestrating. It was awe-inspiring. And more, I knew it was within my power to set such a circle—and to unravel it. It was like listening to someone speak a language you hadn’t conversed in since childhood: you couldn’t quite grasp what was being said, but you felt the rightness of it in your bones. All I needed was time to sit and study what was happening, and I knew I could come up with a way to circumvent it.
Unfortunately, time was something I did not have.
“Penny, can you read anything off the mages?” I asked, circling the mages once more. I could feel the circle gaining power, which meant the demon was becoming more powerful, too.
“Yes. But their magic is…”
“Odd, yeah. Analyze it. See if you can’t find a way to cut them off without infusing the circle with more power.”
“Okay,” she said in a tiny voice.
The man’s skin was turning translucent, showing black feathers underneath. The demon was about ready to emerge from his cocoon.
“Whatever move we make, we have to do it soon,” I said softly, closing my eyes as the hum of the circle vibrated my skin. I stood right next to it now, clearing my mind and letting the magic whisper to me.
The cold throb grew, as I had known it would. It tried to push my fire down.
Blend your heritage, ma bichette. Blend your heritage. Blend your heritage, ma chere. Blend your—
“I got it, Darius. You can stop repeating that now.”
Fuse—
I tilted my head, staring at the creature in the circle. That thought had reverberated from it. The demon had cut it off, and now it was either shielding its thoughts or not thinking at all, but it had been there.
Fuse.
Fuse my magic.
“How?” I asked it, not meaning to. Then, hoping for another slip-up and a free lesson, I asked again, “How do I fuse my magic?”
Its smile stretched across its face, and not in the theoretical way, like in books. This was inhuman and horrible, showing black fangs and a thin tongue behind them. “Come with me, and we will show you.”
“How can you show me if you don’t have the same type of magic?” I asked, raising my hands to the invisible wall of the circle. The cold bit into my skin. The feeling was unpleasant, but if I had to be honest, no more painful than the fire. I realized now that my hatred of the cold was related to the fear of what it would do to my fire.
I needed to push beyond this; I just didn’t know how.
“How are we coming, Penny?” I asked, giving in to the cold. Letting it rise up through me like I’d done earlier that night.
“I think… I think I can create a kind of bridge, but only for a moment.” She exhaled noisily. “You’d have to kill the demon within a very short amount of time. If you don’t succeed, he’ll be banished. We’re not trying to banish him, right? We’re trying to kill him? Because banishing would be very easy.”
“Kill, yes.” I grimaced at the demon’s laughter. “Sooner the better.”
“You have the capacity for greatness, but you are not there yet, heir-child.” It laughed again.
“I hate you.” I closed my eyes as the cold overcame me. Suffocated me.
The candles around us dimmed and then went out.
A shower of bright white light shone down on us. Darius had turned on the warehouse lights.