Tamara was fast—much faster than I had anticipated. But I was ready for her, and I swung my right hand across the air and struck the tip of the lightning bolt, sending her magick crashing into the bubble surrounding us. A shower of sparks fell from the point of impact. Some of the witches flinched, others wowed.
“Good,” she said, “You have a strong form—no doubt Remy’s training paid off.”
“Remy didn’t teach me any of this,” I said, and I pushed my left hand out toward her, forcing a wave of telekinetic magick to rapidly move in her direction. The attack was impossible for her to block or dodge, but only succeeded in unsteadying her footing, which she recovered from quickly. To anyone else it may have knocked them off their feet, but not to her.
Tamara smirked, and suddenly a phantom hand came racing toward me, aimed directly at my neck. But I could see it as it crossed the distance between us, so I reached out with both of my hands and grabbed it as it came, stopping it inches away from my neck. It was a struggle to keep it away from me, as if the hand belonged to some powerful giant with rippling muscles. I knew, though, that this was more psychological warfare than it was physical.
The hand wasn’t real—it was in my mind.
So, I fought fire with fire.
I released the hand, letting it grab my throat and constrict my breathing. But before the lack of oxygen could impair my thinking, I launched my own mental assault, conjuring a demon-like creature to come bursting out of a cloud of smoke, and commanding it to be-line directly toward Tamara.
The demon beat its leathery wings, arching its powerful shoulders, and roared at Tamara as it ran, its large feet pounding on the floor. And Even though the hulking, black creature was a mental construct, Tamara still had to defend herself against it because, like the phantom hand wrapped around my neck right now, the demon was more than capable of hurting her.
The hand released my neck, and I sucked in a deep breath of air, watching as the horned, winged demon barreled down on Tamara, swinging its fist at her face. She put a shield up, much like my own but not quite, and the demon struck it with a loud thump that seemed to shake the very room. It struck the shield again, and again, each time sending a shower of light arching in all directions.
While it had her attention, I collected as much raw magick as I could into my right hand, and hurled it at her in the form of a rippling bolt of violet lightning. The light hit the demon first, which burst into the same cloud of smoke it had manifest from, and then struck Tamara squarely in the chest, lifting her up off the floor and causing her to strike the edge of the bubble, and then fall to the floor.
Tamara struggled to rise, propping herself up with one hand and clutching her chest with the other.
“Do you concede?” I asked.
She looked up at me from the floor. “I take one hit and you ask me to concede?” she said, “You’ve clearly never fought in a real duel before; you’ve just always relied on your dirty magick.”
I braced myself for whatever she was going to throw at me next; lightning, telekinesis, maybe another mental assault. But it was none of those things. Tamara pressed her left index finger against her throat and dry-heaved once. When she opened her mouth, a black cloud began to spill out of her like ink in water, only it wasn’t ink—it was insects.
They shot across the room like little bullets. Hornets, I thought, or wasps, each motivated by the sole intent of hurting me. I pulled my shield, Eliza’s shield, up, and the black cloud of insects struck it like a jet of ink striking a crystal ball. The worst part wasn’t the awful, droning sound they made, or the promise of their poisonous sting; it was the smell. The disgusting odor of rotting eggs assaulted my nostrils.
This was dirty magick.
I grit my teeth as the wasps continued to swarm around me. Already I could feel Eliza’s shield weakening under the strain of hundreds of little pinprick attacks. But I had to hold it up. I had to outlast whatever spell Tamara had cast. Wait it out until the magick faded and died. And when it did, and the wasps dissipated into the air, and I could let my hands fall and breathe.
Strangely, I felt my energy returning to me much more rapidly than it normally would.
“That was illegal magick,” Nicole said, “I’m calling this duel right now. Madison is the winner.”
“Shut up!” Tamara hissed, “This little witch knows blood magick, and I want her to use it. I want you to see her for what she really is.”
I said nothing, and did nothing as Tamara rose to her feet again. Nicole broke the circle, and the magick bubble fizzled to nothing. “The duel is over,” Nicole repeated.
“No,” Tamara said, and she whipped her right hand across the air, slapping Nicole across the face from the other side of the room.
I took a step forward, anger burning in my chest, and screamed Tamara’s name. And when she turned to look at me, grinning a wolf-like grin, I reached down and pulled out the knife I had strapped against my boot. As the gathered witches watched, I clenched my palm around the blade edge and pulled upward, grimacing slightly as the knife bit into my skin.
“That’s it,” she said, “Show me what Remy taught you.”
“Remy didn’t teach me,” I said, “I’d been using blood magick for years before I met him.”
Tamara tilted her head to the side, and her confident smirk failed her.
I flicked my wrist out, sending a streak of blood splattering against the floor at her feet. A cool breeze filled the room and circled around me, weaving around the crowd of witches gathered. Tamara watched, her eyes wide, as the blood began to slide across the floor, growing longer, and gaining more definition as it went, until it no longer looked like a puddle, but a slithering snake the color of blood.
The snake coiled in front of Tamara and fanned its neck out, its bloody tongue flicking the air. Tamara’s hand began to crackle, and she threw an arc of lightning into the snake, but the energy went through and around the snake, striking the floor as if it weren’t even there. She turned her eyes up at me. “You wouldn’t dare kill me,” she said.
“I’m not going to kill you,” I said, “But one word, and my friend will blind you, and paralyze you, and we’ll drag you out of New Orleans. I’m giving you the chance to go quietly… with your dignity intact.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, “You may have won the duel, but this house belonged to Remy—my late husband—which means it belongs to me now, too.”
“That’s not true,” Nicole said.
Tamara snapped her head around and turned her gaze on Nicole. “What? Of course it’s mine.”
Nicole pulled Remy’s letter out from her pocket and walked it over to where I stood.
“What’s that?” Tamara asked.