At least now I had a new tool to use against him.
“Tell me your name,” I ordered.
“Cindy.”
Cindy? I figured something more tough sounding, like Athena, or maybe Bellatrix. Cindy was the last name I’d have guessed.
It made me think that the whorl-kin had been conjured, rather than born from the collective subconscious.
A sorcerer or worse, a wizard, must have created her.
Right on cue, Burt’s voice boomed from the hallway outside the media room.
“Your only way out is through me, sorcerer-agent.”
“Here I was hoping to surprise you with my big reveal,” I shouted back.
“This can go two ways.” His voice sounded like boulders crashing together. “A quick death for you, or a very slow one. It’s up to you.”
I made a buzzer sound. “I’ll take option number three.”
“Crazy human. Fine, then we’ll play this rough way. Seize her!” Burt’s voice thundered.
Burly guys charged into the room, brandishing brass knuckles.
I hated myself for my next order to Cindy. “Stop them,” I said.
She whirled toward them like a psychopathic ballerina, her claws extended.
“Look out!” One guy shouted, before she sliced open his throat.
Two more men fumbled for their guns. She kicked one in the stomach, sending him tumbling backwards and crashing into glass shelving on the far wall. She whirled on the second, opened her jaws and engulfed his face with a sharp snap. His body thrashed and fell, spraying blood from where his face used to be.
She spin-kicked a third man into two more who were just coming through the door. The men stumbled and fell. She raked them with her claws. More screaming erupted.
In seconds five men lay dying on the carpet.
I bent over and dry heaved. What in the seven hells had I done? There was no stop order for a whorl-kin. Only a kill setting. I knew that in the back of my mind, but stupidly hoped it would be different this time.
A huge form loomed in the doorway, brandishing a machete-like blade. Burt.
Cindy leapt at him, arms outstretched. The ogre slashed at her right arm, severing it. She screamed, a high-pitched glass-shattering eruption of sound.
Burt staggered back. I clutched my ears.
She lunged at his face. He blocked with his left arm. She bit hard into it. He grunted, hurled her down onto the carpet, and slashed her stomach open. Purple ichor-like blood, the blood of a manifestation, boiled in the air, and then her form boiled away, leaving only a blackened smear on the carpet. Manifestations don’t die like humans. They dissolve.
The black smear began smoldering.
Burt reared up, rage contorting his already rugged features into a granite mountain-like appearance. His eyes blazed red.
“I’m going to tear you apart, bone by bone!” He roared.
I didn’t have much time. I was out of binding spells, and it would take far too long to cast another one. My fingers fumbled again at the hidden pocket in my jacket. The amulet slipped over my finger.
I was forbidden from doing what I was about to do, but when you have no choice but to leap over the edge, you leap.
Pain lanced up my arm as I rolled the points of the blood amulet into my open palm. Tears filled my eyes. I managed to hold back my scream.
“With this blood, I power my magic,” I chanted in Coptic.
Purple ichor streamed from the wound in the ogre’s arm. He took a step toward me, shaking his head.
Blood magic was forbidden, but I didn’t have a choice.
I used it to fuel another binding spell. But this one wasn’t a command spell.
I rattled off the spell in Coptic as Burt lumbered toward me, breathing hard. More blood spilled from his shoulder and chest. Cindy had done more harm than I’d glimpsed at the time. He slashed the air in front of him with the machete.
“And I’ll gnaw each and every one of your bones,” he bellowed.
Binding magic, by the Laws of the Compact, is meant to control, not to destroy, and destroying a manifestation with it takes a great deal of time.
Unless you fuel that spell with your own blood, which is what I was doing.
Blood pooled in my palm, and trickled down my arm. I flicked it in the air.
The ogre snarled and swung at me.
I ducked. His wounds had slowed him just enough for me to avoid losing my head.
“Burn,” I commanded in Coptic.
Flames burst from him and he howled like a hurricane. I staggered back. Heat washed over me, and I choked from the stench of burning supernatural flesh. Then, he became a tower of flame and his howl rose. I scrambled away, coughing.
Burt fell onto the carpet and the fire began to spread, his huge body blocking the door.
I was trapped. There were no smoke alarms down here, and it wouldn’t have mattered if there were, I’d be long dead before any fire fighters arrived.
I looked around frantically, and spotted the hidden door, now open, that Cindy had come through. I sprinted into the secret passage, which was narrow and dark. Flickering light from the blaze growing behind me illuminated the hall enough to see it had bare stone walls, and a door at the far end. I coughed again. Already smoke filled the corridor.
I stumbled to the door, praying that it wasn’t locked. It wasn’t. I yanked it open. Even gagging from the billowing smoke, my nose wrinkled from the stench of fecal matter and unwashed bodies. A lone lightbulb hung from the ceiling, and illuminated the cramped little room. A half-dozen women in dirty clothes huddled hand-cuffed to a pipe running around the room. Their faces were smudged, and their hair greasy from sweat and not being washed. Beside each was a bucket.
A closed door was on the opposite wall from me. That must lead up. Cindy had to have come this way.
They’d been treated worse than animals. I needed to get them out there. They lifted their heads and looked at me duly.
“I’m here to rescue you,” I said, fighting back a sob.
Smoke
