I was already in motion, and I couldn’t stop myself in time. I heard another spell, and I was thrown into the air, pulled towards Quinn just as the chain lashed out.
It caught me around the arm, burning through my shirt until it decayed and collapsed into ash.
The metal was
“Justin!”
“Justin!”
Twin shouts, seconds apart.
I could feel the wraith’s power ripping through me. It tore at me, at the part of me that wasn’t skin and blood and bone. Draining me. A vortex pulling away the part of me that was living, the spark that kept my heart pumping and my fear rising.
A switch flipped.
Polarity reversed. Life became death became life again.
The vortex became a geyser, and everything that was mine returned in a flash flood of light and life.
“No,” the wraith hissed. “No!”
A dark pall burst into murky light around me, like an aura made from shadowed half-truths and eclipse light. It wasn’t magic, not exactly. Parts were, scraps that felt like something I should recognize, but they were threads in a much larger tapestry.
“Justin! Grab the chain!” Quinn gestured to my arm, and the iron that was already trying to unravel itself from my skin.
I twisted my forearm, grabbed the chain, and refused to let go. The chain shook, contorted, and tried to break free, but I wouldn’t let go.
The aura grew darker, like storm clouds summoned above my head. I could feel
The wraiths’ eyes had looked like they were incapable of emotion, but there was one there now: fear. “You were to be rescued,” it hissed at me.
The aura swept forward from me, slicing through the air like a scythe, and cut the wraith down like it was the firstborn son, and this was a plague.
Shadows swallowed up the wraith, until there was a portal of tangible darkness where it had once stood.
I squinted, feeling the pressure around me ease. The light in the room was more intense than it had been a moment ago.
“What’s going on?” Cole asked, worried.
“Just relax,” Quinn directed. “Close your eyes.”
Close our ey—oh. The light continued to intensify, coupled with a ringing sound that sounded exactly like electronic feedback, a high-pitched whining that was just as intense as the corona of light that blurred everything.
The light grew too intense, the sounds too loud. The humming got so loud, but after our experience with the chains, it was very nearly nothing.
When it faded, the wraith was gone.
Three
Simon Meers
Case Report,
When Virago walked through the motel room door two days later, the reaction was incendiary, to say the least.
Jenna lunged for her immediately, murder in her eyes. “That thing could have killed us, you stupid bitch!”
We were god-only-knew where, dropped off in the middle of the night, and forty-eight hours cooped up in one small room was enough for cabin fever to set in. I spent the majority of my time mediating between Cole’s hyper need for attention and Jenna’s restless irritation.
We hadn’t been able to take anything with us when we fled the city. It wasn’t until sometime the next morning that we stopped long enough for Quinn to pick up new outfits for us at the nearest Walmart. He’d taken the clothes we’d been wearing when we arrived and disappeared, most likely taking them to be burnt.
Leaving town wasn’t normally this intense, but there was a lot of extra crazy to go around because of the wraith. Virago’s reappearance, with Malcolm and Bailey in tow, was just the excuse Jenna needed to put that irritation to bad use.
I grabbed Jenna, even as Malcolm darted around Virago to catch our sister from the other side and prevent a catastrophe.
“Jenna, think!” I pulled on her arm, but fury had her adrenaline flowing and it was more of a struggle than it should have been.
“So predictable,” Virago yawned, feigning boredom. But I could see her eyes darting around, the nervous tightening of her fist.
“I’m
Between Malcolm and I, we were able to hold her back. Well, mostly Malcolm. He was the one built like a pro wrestler.
It was hard not to live in Mal’s shadow since he towered over all of us. Jenna and I were neck and neck, but Mal had at least four or five inches on me. I stopped comparing when I realized I’d never catch up.
Mal was the “-est” sibling. Oldest. Tallest. Calmest. Biggest. We couldn’t exactly join sports teams when we arrived in a new school, but that didn’t stop him from working out like it was his job. Football and wrestling coaches started salivating the moment Mal walked into a new school, but he always turned them down. Everyone probably would have held him up as the perfect child but for being the spawn of terrorists.
It helped that he was gay. It kept me from having the world’s largest inferiority complex.
“Told you Jenna’d stay out of trouble,” Mal called over his shoulder, casual as can be.
Bailey hesitated in the doorway, dwarfed in a white faux fur jacket she must have insisted on.
Bailey, in contrast to Mal, was the youngest and tiniest.
Jenna lunged forward again, and this time Malcolm caught her fully, grabbing her by the waist and scooping her up off the ground like she weighed nothing. To him, she probably did.
“She’s a Witcher,” Mal said. “Just let it go.”
Virago’s childish, snide expression only lasted a moment.
“Meghan!” Quinn said sharply, speaking to Virago, “Let’s go. Give them some privacy.”
The added tension left with the two adults, so even with the five of us crammed in a two-bed motel room, it didn’t seem as bad as it had before.
“We saw a wraith,” Cole announced happily to Bailey, who didn’t look as thrilled.
“Figures she’s a Meghan,” Jenna muttered, once Mal put her down. “I’ve never met one that wasn’t a raging bitch.”
Bailey shrugged out of her coat, folded it carefully, and set it over the motel room chair. “You guys are okay, right? Miss Virago said that Cole got hurt.”
Cole turned his head and pointed to the side of his jaw. But the only remnant of the cut he’d suffered was a penciled red line. “Quinn used his athame on me; it was cool. All the blood went
