“We’ll find another way.”
“There is no other way. We tried and tried again. They don’t listen, those rich men who own the world.”
Caro felt the elemental in her struggling to escape. She guessed Alika must be calling it to take care of her and Damien. While it was contained so that it couldn’t hurt her, she could feel her strength draining as she fought to keep it in check. Was there no way out of this?
“In what way,” Damien asked, “are you any better than they?”
For an instant Alika’s eyes widened. Then they narrowed again. “If you’re so powerful, mage, send it back yourself.”
Damien looked at Caro. “Melt it.”
“What?”
“Melt what is inside you with everything you’ve got. Then release it.”
She stared at him, uncertain, then noticed that somehow he seemed to be growing larger. That wasn’t possible, was it?
“Caro!”
She nodded and tried to do what he said, although it was all guesswork at this point. She found the white flame inside her and imagined it growing hotter and hotter. Little by little she felt her insides warm. Little by little the container she had created to hold the elemental seemed to shrink. It was working! She focused more of her energy on it, until she felt it grow small and almost lukewarm.
“Now,” said Damien.
Mentally she pulled the stopper from the bottle. At once she felt the elemental recoil, pulling away from her and back toward Alika.
Alika gasped and took a quick step back. But then she seemed to gather herself. “So we fight,” she said.
“Not if you send it back.”
“I can call another.”
“Not while I breathe,” Damien said. “I don’t have to kill you, you know. I have other methods.”
Alika’s response was surprisingly fast. With a fingernail, she clawed her own wrist and let blood spill on the floor while she began to chant.
Caro looked at Damien, saw the inevitable flare of his nostrils at the scent of blood. Was Alika hoping the blood would distract him? If she was, it didn’t work.
Damien lifted his arms and blue lightning began to dance along both of them. “I am mage,” he said. “I am also vampire. You have no idea, woman.”
She laughed and continued her chant, pulling things from deep pockets in her dress and scattering them around.
Jerome, looking horrified, backed up. “Mother...” But she ignored him.
Damien began to chant, too, his voice growing thunderous. And before Caro’s eyes, he grew, becoming larger and suddenly appearing to her to be wrapped in some kind of white cloak. What was going on?
But then Alika grew, too, though not as big as Damien.
It was as if power was changing their aspects. Maybe only Caro could see it and she wondered. But she didn’t have time to wonder very long. She felt the elemental strengthening again, and with every ounce of will she had in her, she sent hot white light toward it.
Damien’s voice had begun to sound like the roll of thunder from a nearby storm. It drowned Alika’s chant, but as an eerie red light began to glow around her, Caro knew that she was still building power.
Jerome appeared to be wishing he could fade into the wall.
Caro watched with fascination, wondering what if anything she could do. When her skin started to prickle as if there was lightning in the air, she wondered if it came from Damien or Alika. Or whether it even mattered.
As the elemental stirred again, she sent more white light toward it and felt it recoil. Good. If that was all she could do, then she would do it.
Blue lightning spread all over Damien’s body. She could hear it snap and hum like a thing alive. Alika’s red glow increased until it looked like flames leaping outward. Should she direct white light that way, too? But almost as soon as the thought distracted her, she felt the elemental surge again, its power growing. Holding out her own arms, she imagined white heat flowing toward it, holding it in check.
Blue lightning met red flame. The bokor and the mage seemed to fill the room and reach beyond it, impossible or not. To Caro they seemed to become towering giants wrapped in their power, mythical beings no longer human.
As soon as their powers connected, a deafening crack sounded and the entire shop seemed to shake. Startled, she almost lost track of the elemental but quickly cornered it again. She watched as her own white light shot forth toward that force, but then her power did something odd. It seemed to twine around Damien’s blue light, adding just a bit.
Was she helping? She wished she knew. The only thing she knew for certain at that moment was that nothing must happen to Damien. Nothing.
Although given how large and powerful he looked right now, she doubted anything at all could harm him. He seemed to hurl blue bolts at Alika from his hands.
To her it seemed almost as if time had stopped. Seconds and minutes became meaningless in a point of eternity. Blue bolts met red flames again and again until she wondered if the powers were evenly matched. Nothing seemed to change except for those bolts.
“Send it back now,” Damien thundered, “or I swear I’ll leave you with nothing!”
Then to Caro’s amazement, the blue lightning seemed to be sucking the red flames toward it. Oh, God, she hoped Alika wasn’t winning. Frantically she tried to think of what she could do to help.
But Damien, she realized, didn’t look as if this change bothered him at all.
“I told you, woman. I am mage and I am vampire. You have not met the likes of me before. Send the elemental back!”
Alika said nothing. She tightened her face, as if fighting with every ounce of her strength. For an instant the red flowed back to her. But only for an instant. Then it started flowing toward Damien again, and as it reached his blue lightning, it faded toward lavender.
“You’re running out of time,” Damien warned.
“I can leave it and you won’t be able to stop it,” Alika gasped.
“If you leave it, can you prevent it from harming your son? Or his family?”
More red flames disappeared into Damien’s blue aura. Caro blinked, as it seemed to her that Alika was shrinking a bit, that her fiery aura was fading.
“Do it!” Damien demanded.
Caro felt it happen. One moment she was holding the elemental back, and the next it was gone. Completely gone. While the air still sizzled with electricity, it had also grown lighter, clearer.
“Caro?” Damien asked.
“I can’t feel it anymore.”
“Wait a minute, and be sure.”
Alika continued to shrink, her aura growing dimmer. “Stop,” she begged.
“I’ll stop when I’m sure the elemental is gone.”
“It’s gone,” Alika groaned. “It’s gone.”
“Caro?”
“I really can’t sense it anymore.”
Another clap sounded, this one quieter. All of a sudden there was just an old woman sagging into a chair, and Damien, the Damien she had known all along, standing there.
Damien surprised her by squatting before Alika. He waited until he had her attention.
“I took power from you.”
“I know.”
“You still have enough. You can build it again but it will take time. But do not do this again, Alika. I don’t
