demons. Sullivan had already opened up the book and was looking for a spot to work by the time she’d gone back for Whisper and Mr. Garrett.
Even with Mr. Garrett’s pudginess, the two of them together weighed less than Sullivan, so she took the both of them in one hop. She realized as she touched down that she probably wasn’t doing them any favors, since they had been on the west side of an eastbound demon, and now she’d dumped them right into the shadow of its next target.
“Dan! How big a shield does it make?” Sullivan asked as soon as they’d arrived.
“The more Power the creator puts into it, the bigger it should be.”
“Shit…” Sullivan muttered.
Faye knew right away what was wrong. Mr. Sullivan was by far the best of them at making spells. He just had an artist’s knack for it. However, he’d already burned his Power hard and there was no way he’d had time to recuperate. If you pushed too hard you risked killing yourself. The others hadn’t made that connection yet, but Sullivan caught her looking at him, and he just shook his head. He was going to do it anyway.
“I’ve got plenty of Power!” Faye exclaimed.
Sullivan held up the open book. “Could you bind this?” It was terribly complex. She was still struggling with the most basic communication spells, and there wasn’t normally a giant demon coming to kill her if she messed those up. Her hesitancy was obvious. “Didn’t think so. This one’s on me.”
Near them, a tank fired its main gun. The shock wave sent her reeling. Sullivan just hunched his shoulders and walked ahead of the line of military vehicles. Hundreds of soldiers had arrived, and they were going to hold this line or die trying. He picked an open spot of sidewalk and knelt down. People were still fleeing past, but the bodies parted around him like waves against a rock. Mr. Sullivan took a knife from his belt, used it to slice open the tip of one fingertip, and began to write on the sidewalk with his own blood.
The demon was charging toward them. There would be only one chance to get it right.
“Jake, what’re you doing?” Mr. Browning shouted.
“If this works, don’t leave the circle,” Sullivan responded.
“I see… Would it be all right if my bullets leave the circle?”
Sullivan drew another line. “I don’t see why not.” Browning went back to shooting.
A hand landed on Faye’s arm and pulled her around hard. It was Whisper. Her eyes were wide, terrified. “Listen to me. There is something I must tell you. It is about who you are.”
Faye didn’t understand. She turned back around. The demon was closing fast. “Can’t it wait?”
“No! Listen to me, Faye. Remember what we spoke about before?”
“Of course, but I-”
Whisper was desperate. “You must listen to me. You are the one.”
What?
Faye didn’t have time to think about Whisper’s words. The blood magic design Sullivan was drawing had caught someone’s attention. Several soldiers were running toward the Heavy. “Stop that, wizard!” shouted an officer.
“His kind brought the wrath of God upon us!” screamed one of the marchers. “Kill him!”
It was understandable. A man drawing obviously magical markings with his own blood, with a great big demon nearby, was pretty suspicious-looking. Rifles were raised in Sullivan’s direction. “Back off. I’m busy,” he growled.
“Shoot him!” ordered the terrified officer.
“ Stand down! ” The voice that came next seemed to drown out the entire world. “You heard the man,” Dan Garrett said, angry magic seething from every word. “ Back off.” The soldiers lowered their rifles. The Mouth was pushing so hard that even Faye wanted to surrender, and she was already on his side. “That big fellow is going to save your life.” The Mouth decided to take it up a notch and put his new allies to work. “Protect this man. Fix bayonets and keep these idiots out of his way.”
“Yes, sir!” the soldiers shouted in unison, and formed a protective circle around Sullivan.
“Faye, listen to me,” Whisper pleaded. “I was sent to watch you, even to kill you if necessary.”
But Whisper was her friend. “Kill me?”
“Because you are the Spellbound.”
Faye didn’t know what to say. She recalled Whisper’s strange story, but it didn’t make any sense. “The murderer?”
“You have no idea how much I wanted to simply murder you and be done, at first… But I was wrong. The last Spellbound was evil. You are not like him, you are nothing like that grey-eyed monster, but you could become like him. The possibility was there, and that was enough.”
Faye looked away from Whisper. Sullivan had finished the spell from the Coordinator’s book. Now he was concentrating on the small design, binding it to the ground, connecting it to his own Power.
“That was his spell! That was his curse! You inherited it when Jacques killed him. Can’t you feel it? All of that death? Every time someone dies near you, you grow stronger, don’t you?” Whisper had gone crazy. She didn’t know what she was talking about.
Except she was stronger, like before, like when she’d fought against the Chairman.
Where so many had died.
“The Power bonds to us, lives through us, and when we die, it takes that bit of itself back, larger than before. The Spellbound subverts the order of things. That energy, instead of going back to the Power, it goes to the Spellbound for a time. It isn’t like your regular magic that will regrow. When you use this stolen Power up, it returns home, and that leaves you hungry for more. That’s how the first Spellbound became evil. He needed more and more magic, so he began to take it. That’s how he became a monster, and the same thing will happen to you.”
Faye’s mind had always moved rapidly, and now it was spinning through the implications of Whisper’s words. The first time she’d had a jump in Power had been when Grandpa had died. After stabbing a kanji-bound man in the heart, she’d had enough Power to beat Delilah in a fight. She’d grown stronger again during Mar Pacifica amidst the dying Iron Guards, and then even greater aboard the Tokugawa, and all of that extra Power that she’d been granted had been burned up in one epic Travel, when she’d dragged the entire Tempest a thousand miles through the walls of space. And it had started again with the sudden death of George Bolander. He’d died fighting Crow… and Faye had taken his connection to the Power.
Faye was different from other Actives. She’d just never understood how different. It made sense. She was stealing magic when people died. That was horrible. Whisper was right. Only a monster would steal somebody’s magic.
She snapped back to reality. Why had Whisper decided to tell her all this now when there was other important stuff going on? The strain was going to kill Mr. Sullivan. Veins stood out on his neck. Sweat poured down his filthy face. He gathered up every last bit of Power he had and shoved it into that design and then he went back for more. They only had seconds left.
“When a Normal dies, it isn’t much. Just the little connection that was there from when the Power first checked to see if it could bond to them, but with all of those poor people…” Whisper trailed off as she looked across the mall. “Are they enough? Could they ever possibly be enough?”
But Faye didn’t know what to do.
The god of demons’ rampage was almost upon them. Its footfalls were shaking the tanks. Shells were exploding across it with no effect. Soldiers and marchers flinched away, prepared to die.
The air seemed to shimmer around Mr. Sullivan. He lifted one hand, and with a roar, slammed it down into the middle of his spell. The sidewalk cracked. The world seemed to flex in an expanding blue wave out from Mr. Sullivan’s hand. It washed over the soldiers, over the refugees, and over her. The wave passed them by and the world behind seemed to return to normal, except for an electric hum audible just beneath the ringing in her ears.
Mr. Sullivan collapsed, seemingly lifeless, onto the broken sidewalk.
The wall of blue surged outward until it collided with the unnatural bulk of the Summoned. The demon recoiled as if it had driven itself into a mountain. It drew back and crashed into the wall again. The spell did not budge. Furious mouths opened and the demon hurled fire against the shield. The heat that came through was brutal, but the flames washed over the blue wall, leaving them all in what felt like a hollow dome of fire.
He did it! He’d saved them! Dan went to try and help Mr. Sullivan.
