Blood Spells

Letting his mind sink into the spell, he followed the power flow as it encircled Saamal’s body and swirled down into the open chest cavity, where it pooled, pulsing in an asynchronous rhythm.

Rabbit let his hand follow the path his mind had taken, skimming along the old man’s outstretched limbs, over his face, and finally to the place where his heart had been. When he touched the pulsing, discordant knot of power, it shuddered. And so did the body.

More, for a second he could’ve sworn he saw the ghostly image of Saamal, alive and well, standing beside it.

“Fuck me. It moved!” Strike jerked Myrinne back a step and brought up his shield. The Nightkeeper magic sparked red-gold where it intersected with the dark-magic spell.

Saamal’s body went limp as the dark magic drained away from the chest cavity, attracted by its opposite, dark to light, negative to positive.

“Back off,” Rabbit snapped. “You’re messing with the balance, and I can handle the dark stuff.”

What was more, he thought he knew what he was looking at, though not how the elder had managed it.

He was a little surprised when the king complied without argument, falling back and taking Myrinne with him. “Be careful,” Strike said in quiet warning. “Iago knows you inside and out, literally. This could be the trap.”

Rabbit shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think the old man used the magic to tether his soul to his body after death.” If he concentrated, he could almost make out the ghost standing beside the corpse.

“I think he sent the nightmare to summon me here, knowing I wear the hellmark but have no allegiance to Iago.”

“If he had the chops for that level of magic, why didn’t he reveal himself when you were here before?” Strike pressed.

“Beats the hell out of me.” He had a few suspicions, though, none of them good.

With Strike out of range, the dark magic flowed back into its original pattern, and the power bundle in the old man’s chest cavity began pulsing again. But it was far weaker than it had been before, as if the encounter with the Nightkeeper magic had nullified part of the spell. This time when Rabbit touched the knotted dark magic, the corpse didn’t move.

“There’s something going on here.” He described the power flow to Strike, the way it kept pulsing in Saamal’s chest, unfocused and losing steam. “I think he died before he could finish the spell. If I could just—”

“No fucking way,” Strike interrupted. “So far all I’ve heard here is a bunch of wishful thinking.”

“You saw the body move.”

“I need more than that before I let you use dark magic.”

Trust me, Rabbit wanted to say, but didn’t, because he had a feeling he and Strike might’ve passed the point of no return on that front. But while he had betrayed Strike’s trust by not telling him about the visit to Oc Ajal, he’d done way worse to Saamal and the villagers.

“You want proof? Fine. Keep your eyes on the left side of the body.” Fixing his attention on the barely perceptible ghost image, he sent what little dark magic he had left into the wavering shape.

Nothing happened. Then, slowly, Saamal’s ghost became visible as a translucent shadow standing beside the open-chested corpse.

“Holy. Shit.” Strike stared, jaw working. Then he nodded stiffly. “Okay. What do you need? You want an uplink?”

“Not with you guys. I want Michael.” At the king’s sharp look, Rabbit turned up his palms in a

“What the hell else can I do?” gesture. “I need dark magic, not light, and he’s the only one who comes close. Lucius said the old rituals used to split the muk into its dark and light halves, right? Well, I’ve got both bloodlines in me, and I wear both marks. I might be able to take Michael’s magic, divide it into light and dark, and funnel the dark half into Saamal.”

“Might be,” Strike repeated ominously.

Rabbit met his eyes and did something he almost never did. He said, “Please.”

The king stayed silent for a long moment. Then he nodded. “Fine. We’ll try it.” He got on the radio and recalled the entire team, his body language stiff and annoyed.

While they waited for the others, Rabbit met Myrinne’s eyes. She gave him a covert thumbs-up and the special smile she reserved just for him, which smoothed out some of the nerves that were digging into him harder by the minute. He sent her a wink of thanks. And as the others converged, he said a small, directionless prayer: Please, gods, don’t let this be a trap.

He didn’t think it was, but Iago knew him too well. Better, it seemed some days, than he knew himself.

“I need a ten-foot radius,” he said. “Except for Michael. I need you in here.” Quickly, Rabbit explained what was going on, and what he was going to try. As he did, Saamal’s ghost faded entirely; he hoped to hell it wasn’t all the way gone. When Michael came up beside him, he said, “I need you to boost me with the smallest trickle of muk you can manage.” Which was a little like trying to plug a reading light into a nuclear power plant—it might work . . . or it might blow the lamp right the fuck up. And he was the lamp.

“You’re sure about this?”

“Yes.” No.

At a nod of agreement from Strike, Michael moved around behind Rabbit and gripped his shoulders, the way he did when he balanced Sasha’s chu’ul magic. “You ready?”

Rabbit nodded. “Bring it.”

Michael brought it, all right. Silver power slammed into Rabbit, searing from his shoulders to the ends of his fingers and toes and back again. Pain ripped through him and he hissed out a breath.

“Too much?” Michael asked, his voice rocky with the effort of squelching the power to a thin trickle.

“I’ll deal.” After the first sledgehammer blow the pain leveled off, then warmed to something closer to pleasure. Magic twined through Rabbit, the silver becoming braided strands of brown and red-gold, dark and light magic intertwined. “Okay,” he breathed, peripherally aware that the others were fixated on him, waiting for him to do something amazing.

Well, he was godsdamned well trying.

Slowly at first, and then with growing confidence, he separated the strands with fingers of thought; he sent the light magic into the back of his brain, where his Nightkeeper talents resided. Then he put his hand once more inside Saamal’s open chest cavity, where his heart should have been, and channeled the dark magic to that point.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the dark power curled around his hand, taking the shape of his fist and becoming almost tangible. Within the bundled magic, he felt a flutter. A pulse. Another.

The throbbing gained in rhythm and intensity as he channeled more dark magic into Saamal. He could almost hear the pulses become a twofold beat: lub dub, lub dub. It was fucking working.

What was more, the ghost became visible once more as a dark shadow beside the body. And, as Rabbit continued to feed the dark magic into the half-finished spell, the ghostly image started drifting down to align with the corpse.

“Come on, old man,” he said under his breath. “You must’ve stuck around for a reason.”

“Ho-ly shit,” Patience whispered from the other side of the fire pit, where she and Brandt stood shoulder to shoulder.

There was enough of his old crush left that he got a buzz off her gasp. But in the split second he was distracted, the magic built inside him too quickly, threatening his control. A shimmer of red-gold magic leaked through the connection, making the ghost writhe with a soundless scream.

“Shit!” Rabbit yanked back the light magic and tried to send it toward his talents, but his usual reserves were already beyond full.

“Let off some steam,” Michael warned in a low voice. “You’ve got to keep the balance between light and dark.”

“Right.” He couldn’t pour dark magic into the elder without bleeding off an equal amount of light magic. But where was he supposed to put it?

Fire, came the immediate instinctual answer. Light this place up in a