Magic In the Blood

fingers.

    Then the pain eased and I could move. But I wasn’t the one in control of my legs any more.

    I took a step away from Pike, a step past him. Trager. The asshole was dragging me to him. Making me leave Pike behind. Another step. Two.

    I fought the pull of the Binding, leaned back against it. Yelled as the hook shifted to catch at my lungs. I couldn’t leave Pike, couldn’t leave him dying behind me.

    I still had the dagger. By damn, I was going to use it. I forced my hands up, trembled as I turned the knife to my chest, aiming for the hook. I had to use both hands to hold it steady, to press it against my chest. The tip slipped through the thin fabric of my shirt, nipped gently at my skin.

    I took another step, heard the deadweight thunk as Pike fell the rest of the way to the ground. I couldn’t turn to look at him. I pressed the dagger harder, broke the skin over my breastbone.

    Wait. Something was wrong with this. Magic dagger or not, if I shoved a knife through my heart, I wouldn’t be around long enough to do anything else.

    Holy hells.

    Think, Allie.

    The glyph. The Binding on my thigh. I could cut the bastard’s magic out of me.

    I took another step and shifted the grip on the blade. Before Trager could make me take another step, I slid the tip-okay, more than just the tip, the whole damn length of the blade-across my thigh.

    The knife sliced effortlessly through the heavy denim of my jeans. It sank into my thigh like heated glass. I yelled. Felt like barfing. Instead I jerked the blade out of my leg. I tugged at the hole in my jeans, ripping it open. I blinked sweat out of my eyes and looked down at the glyph.

    What I saw was blood, my blood, pouring down the pus green venous ridges of the Binding glyph. I had to pull the magic out of it. Zayvion had said that. Pull the magic out.

    But I needed magic to do that. Needed magic to see what I was doing.

    Fuck it all.

    I tried to calm my mind. I whispered a mantra over and over: Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black… I set a Disbursement-I was so done with having a headache and fever and went for a nice head cold this time. I jerkily traced the glyph for Reveal over my thigh and drew magic up out of my body to pour into it.

    Magic responded strangely. It skittered beneath my skin like a rock over a pond instead of flowing smoothly. It took all the concentration I had to guide the magic into the spell I’d cast.

    And doing that made everything hurt.

    Trager yanked on the hook in my chest.

    But my leg wasn’t working so good. I stumbled forward and fell.

    It is amazing how it doesn’t matter how much pain I’m in, I can always feel one more thing. I hit the ground hard, banged my elbow, my hip, scraped the side of my face. Managed not to hit my head, break my hold on the Reveal spell, or impale myself on the knife.

    Go, me.

    I curled inward, fetal position, and wished I could stay there forever. Then pushed up to a sitting position. Made it too.

    The Reveal I cast showed me the Binding’s true nature. The glyph on my thigh glowed pus green and oozed black. I’d never seen anything like it. One part of my mind-the part I was trying very hard not to listen to-was screaming. The other part was getting pissed off.

    Calm, Allie. Stay calm.

    Pike rattled out a long, thin breath.

    I inhaled, scented the rotten flesh stench of the Veiled, who undoubtedly had invited themselves to my little private hell. I didn’t take time to search for them. I knew they were there, around me, on their slow march.

    Fast. I needed to work fast.

    I opened my mouth, leaned toward my thigh, and inhaled the scent and signature of the spell. I knew Trager had cast it, but my Hounding senses sorted through the spell’s subtleties. And, most important, let me trace the actual manner in which the spell had been cast.

    With the knife in my right hand, I pressed my right fingers at the top of the glyph and traced it, dragging my fingers through the blood, drawing a new layer of pain along its twisted route.

    Ow, ow, ow. Someone was whining like a kicked puppy. That someone was me.

    My fingers probed at the spell, pushed at it.

    There. Where the thinnest tendril of the glyph stretched out to connect to the knotted lump in the center. The Binding originated there.

    Keeping my right fingers on the point of origin, I brushed my left fingers more lightly out from there, followed the twists and knots until my fingertip rested on the exit point of the spell-the last line drawn before the spell had been stabbed into me. That point was deep in the gash I’d made with the knife.

    Good news, I told myself. I didn’t have to make a second cut.

    I gritted my teeth and stuck my fingers into the wound. Holy shit, that hurt. My fingers slipped across a very thin, glasslike thread in my flesh. That was the Binding, cast in blood magic, which had somehow turned solid beneath my skin. Or maybe blood magic always turned to glass. I didn’t know. And I didn’t care.

    I pinched at the slippery thread, caught it between my thumb and fingernails. Then I tugged. The Binding slithered beneath my skin, unwinding with barbed pain along the path of its design.

    Good, but not good enough.

    I tugged harder, groaned. The glyph unwound some more. I could see the solid glass thread as it exited my skin, but as soon as it hit the air, it dissolved into ashy black smoke. And of course the harder I pulled, the more it hurt.

    Pike was dying. The Veiled were closing in. I didn’t have time to be subtle. I clenched my teeth and yanked. Fire scraped across my thigh, up my belly, shocked across my nerves. Pain gouged my chest and stabbed my heart and lungs. I yelled and yelled. Stars burst at the edges of my vision.

    But I didn’t stop pulling.

    My vision narrowed. The only sound I could hear was the pounding of my blood. My world reduced to two things: pain and sheer determination not to stop pulling on the spell.

    The Binding shattered, rising in the air like wisps of smoke from a sudden fire. I broke out in a heavy sweat, like a bad fever breaking. I was still sitting, my left hand pulled as far from my body as it could reach, the final ashes of the spell drifting away on the sweet-cherry-scented breeze.

    Without knowing it, I’d pressed the dagger deep into my thigh again. Holy hells, that was going to scar. So much for wearing miniskirts.

    Somehow I had managed to hold on to the Reveal spell. I blinked, looked up. The watercolor people-the Veiled, dead magic users-rushed me. Empty black eyes, mouths open, hands reaching, hungry for my magic.

    I scrambled backward, turned my face away from their onslaught, and let go of the Reveal spell. The stink of dead flesh rushed past me, borne on an unnatural wind. And nothing more. No fingers, no eyes, no mouths.

    I shuddered, gagged. Took a couple hard breaths. Then I dragged my ass back to where Pike lay.

    Trager would now know the Binding was broken. He would now know I was not his little toy. And it pissed me off that I had just destroyed the evidence I had against him-evidence that would have thrown him in chains.

    But when I made it to Pike, I didn’t care.

    Pike was curled up on his bloodiest left side-Hounding instincts to keep the most vulnerable side of yourself hidden, protected. It meant his good eye-the eye he still had-was toward me.

    I brushed my fingers over his neck, searching for a pulse. A sluggish throb sent a slow gush of blood over my fingers.

    Deep blood. Lifeblood. Pouring down to the icy street.

    Even though I didn’t remember doing it, Nola had told me I healed Zayvion with magic when the storm of wild magic raged over the city. Paying the price for that had thrown me in a coma and erased weeks of my life. It