Energy thickened on the air, biting against my skin. Around me, my companions shifted and twitched, rubbing at their skin as the magic feasted on it. The disgusting stench of rotten eggs pulsed within the magic.
Sulfuric, dark, demonic magic.
My own energy burst to the fore without my even calling it, a primal directive fed by my survival instinct. A sultry, lazy wind floated around our small group to form a protective, living wall, its gentle force making Desiree’s scarlet robes dance around her ankles. Near the door at our backs, I could hear the sound of pages flipping, as Osvald no doubt used his power over the written word to search for a way to neuter the demon.
The air behind the demoness thickened slightly, a thin black line dividing it at its center like a metaphorical zipper. Archie was creating a void.
Next to me, Eddie’s body had gone very still. I risked a glance toward my brother and gasped. His blue gaze had fractured. Random shapes and colors flared and roiled and shifted within his eyes like shattered glass filtering a kaleidoscope of light in a thousand different directions.
A thin sheen of multi-hued energy slipped over him, snugging itself to his skin like a micro-thin wetsuit. Chaotic waves of energy roiled and spun away from him like starbursts, alternately shifting space and then sucking it back only to turn it upside down with a soft moan of air bumping up against unnatural energy. I’d never seen magic like Eddie’s. It was powerful and disordered and it had me fascinated.
What exactly was my brother?
Standing next to him felt like snuggling up to the front edge of unbridled nuclear power just before it blows. To say that it was discomfiting would be an unsatisfying description.
It was life-changing.
Desiree’s energy sharpened, its stench thickening as it pulsed against the wind barrier my mother had thrown. A roiling red miasma poured from her spread fingers and pooled near her feet. I watched it form a misty river of power and flow toward us, the energy creating ice along the floor before it bumped up against our protective energy.
Eddie’s unruly magic thrummed on the air. It pulsed around him, throbbing painfully against my skin. I turned to Narina. “Is that going to be all right?”
My mother looked past me to her son and winced. “Probably not. It might be best if we…”
She never finished that statement.
A hollow, echoing boom imploded on the air, the power so impossible in the restrained space that it sucked back into itself, forming a spinning globe of barely-restrained power in the center of the room. The magic globe began to spin, whirling faster and faster and pulling the demon’s sulfurous black energy toward it in a glittering black stream. When it could hold no more of the ugly energy, it gave a final throb, like the last beat of a dying heart, and then popped. Chaos exploded outward in a wash that would have blown us out of the room if it weren’t for a thick, purple wall that had somehow popped into place at the last moment.
Desiree was blown out of the room, her lush form crashing through the wall behind her and skidding across the shiny dark floor of the room beyond. She crashed against the wall and went slack and unmoving.
The silence that followed was startling. We all stared at the pretty purple wall and blinked. Then, as if we all reached the same conclusion at once, we slowly turned our stunned glances to the tall man standing by the door.
Osvald’s black eyes were wide. His ruddy cheeks paled as we turned our questioning gazes his way, and then he slowly grinned. “Well then. That worked out quite nicely,” Osvald said. He released the slender tome with a sparkly purple cover and snapped his fingers. The book disappeared into thin air before it hit the ground.
The dense purple wall disappeared with it.
We stared at the motionless demon across the room for a long moment, nobody speaking. When she didn’t move, I looked at Archie. “What do you think?”
He shrugged. “The boy’s chaos magic is powerful. It’s possible she’s incapacitated.”
I turned to my brother and found him leaning against the wall next to the door, looking pale and slightly dazed.
“He’ll be okay,” Narina said softly to me. “He’s created a lot of focused magic since we arrived here. It just takes him a moment to regain his strength.”
Focused chaos magic? I thought. Hm.
“Where do you suppose her evil hostess is?” Osvald asked, his hands shoved into the pockets of his dowdy gray slacks. The gray-blue sweater he wore was tatty looking, with moth holes peppering the wool, and his slacks were an inch too short over scuffed black loafers. With the jaunty red bowtie and wrinkled blue button-down shirt, he looked the epitome of a bookish professor.
“That’s what I’m worried about,” Sebille said, buzzing down to our level. She had a cobweb running from one wing to a pointed ear. Apparently, she’d been skulking about near the ceiling. “I’ll go do a quick reconnoiter. See if I can locate Dacara.”
I nodded. “Be careful.”
She buzzed off, disappearing around the door leading into the main house from the kitchen. I noticed she gave the sleeping princess in front o the fireplace a wide berth.
I looked at my companions. “Ready?”
To their credit, they all nodded.
I looked at Osvald. “Do you have a book that tells you how to do a binding spell?”
His black eyes narrowed in thought. He nodded, snapped his fingers, and a dusty book covered in some kind of brown paper with bent and tattered edges appeared in his hands. He looked at the book, and pages started flipping.
I left him to do his thing and forced my feet to move forward.
At the door, I stopped and stuck my head through, looking around the room before stepping inside. Aside from the seemingly unconscious Desiree, the big room was empty. It was quiet too. Unnaturally so.
